She Dims the Stars (16 page)

I turn and regard him with a laugh. “Were you trying to save some for a snack later?”

The look in his eyes is anything but amused. He’s sizing me up like he’s deciding whether or not to ask a question. I’m hyper aware of everything in that space in time. The smell of the store. The crinkle of the wrapper in my hand. The buzzing of the fluorescent lights. How unfocused my eyesight is as I become lightheaded waiting for him to speak.

He clears his throat and looks down at his hands and then back up at me, a tick in his jaw alerting me to the seriousness of the situation. “Did you run away because of me? Was it my fault, Byrdie?”

Every last thing that I’ve ever wanted to say to him builds up inside of my throat, and the pressure in my chest expands until I’m sure I’m going to pass out. This isn’t the time and place for it, though. I have a plan, and it does not involve standing in front of the beer refrigerator of a Chevron gas station. I wait a few seconds and gather my thoughts before I speak, even though I can sense that my silence is giving Cline more of an answer than a simple yes or no would.

“I didn’t run away. So, no.”

He holds my gaze, our eyes locked and bodies only inches apart for what feels like the first time in eons. He’s so familiar and yet the most foreign thing in my entire life right now. “Why would your dad lie about that? Tell everyone you ran away if you didn’t?” He asks, his voice low and a little shaky.

I shrug and look away, grabbing another treat before I sidestep him. “Some lies are easier to say out loud than telling people the truth.” There’s no reason for me to turn around and look at his face as I walk away. There’s confusion and hurt there that I’ve seen so many times before, more than I could possibly keep count of. Part of this trip is making that right, but I’m forcing myself to take my therapist’s advice and stick with the plan I have in my head. Ignoring the impulse to tell him everything in the here and now is overwhelming. and that’s exactly how I know it’s not right.

It’s not time.

The first day I met Dr. Stark. she didn’t look at me with pity or like I was some kind of miracle. She didn’t treat me as if I were some sort of hopeless thing that couldn’t be cured. She treated me like a person, and I didn’t know how to respond to that.

The first session began with the question, “What brings you here?” And I answered with a name, so she cut me off. It wasn’t
who
brought me there. There was no one person that caused me to end up in her office. No two people were responsible for my time spent in the hospital while Patrick and Miranda played damage control and lied that I’d run away. I half expected to hear the therapist tell me no one can make you feel inferior without your consent, but she stopped just shy of that.

She asked for a complete history. A full rundown. So I told her everything, down to the very last moment I could remember, and she wrote her notes all the while. She would cross and uncross her legs, nod and stop writing at particular intervals if something of note would come out of my mouth. Otherwise, she was nothing but professional, and by the end of that first session, I think I had told her everything I could think of, starting from the moment I was born until that very second I was in her office.

There was blame and guilt everywhere, almost as if I could see it piling up on the ground around me. The more I spoke, the more carnage, the higher the body count, there was. Everyone had a hand in my misery and owned a bit of why I was sitting in front of this slender woman with honey colored hair and a blank expression as I bared my fifteen-year-old soul.

By the time I was done, I was a mess, both emotionally and physically. I’d cried until I was dry, and my body hurt from the act of it. But all she did was offer me a tissue and then a small piece of advice that changed the course of my life forever. “Now that you’re done blaming everyone else for your troubles, we can start working on the root of the problems inside of
you
, Audrey. Let’s figure out where
those
come from.”

It was the inability to understand the origin of that—where those issues arose from—that had confounded me so deeply. I had no sense of who I really was or where I had truly come from. Now the only people who knew the truth were a few adults who were paid to know my secrets or were trying to pretend they didn’t exist.

Then I got assigned Cara, the voice on the other end of the phone. My weekly check-in to make sure everything is still okay. A twisted kind of pen pal or internet friend, but we’d been relegated to speaking only by phone and for the express purpose of my mental wellbeing.

Sitting in the car with Elliot as we drive back into Alabama, I wonder if there will come a time where I can tell someone else how I’m feeling instead of depending on a Tuesday night call. I wonder if this plan that my therapist set in motion, where I let go of these preconceived notions about the guilt I associated with each person I blamed for having a hand in what happened all those years ago, will actually make a difference. I wonder if I’ll come out on the other side like some sort of monarch butterfly. Maybe I’ll end up like that confused moth in the bathroom, bumping into everything and trying to escape a bathroom stall instead.

I wonder how September will be as a psychologist when she finally establishes her own practice. When we were up on the cliff and I was melting down, she was so kind and reassuring. She knew before I even said anything. It must have been the fear in my eyes. Or the way I curled up into a ball and started freaking out about how there was no way in hell I was going over that ledge. She told me it was all in my head. Her touch was so tender and reassuring. Her voice was so calm and soothing. Her eyes held mine while we spoke and she encouraged me to face my fears.

A smile plays at my lips as a thought hits me suddenly. With the way Cline has become interested in her so quickly, would she end up practicing as September Worley? Or September Somers?

“What are you smiling about over there?” Elliot asks as he pulls up to a red light. September and Cline pull up beside us, and I look over to see the two of them talking with the windows down, huge, stupid smiles on their faces. They’re so into each other it’s ridiculous.

“If those two get married, then her name will forever be September Somers.” I say without any sarcasm at all.

“They’ve known each other for all of three days. I don’t think you can start planning a wedding for them yet,” Elliot says as the light turns green.

We pull ahead of them at least thirty seconds before September even realizes that the signal has changed, and I turn to glance back over at the boy sitting to my left. “I have a hunch about this one. I know we’re not close anymore, but he’s pretty easy to read when it comes to girls. I haven’t seen him this into someone before. Not even Kelsey. And I’m pretty sure his twelve-year-old brain thought he was going to marry her one day.”

Elliot’s shoulders raise a bit and he grips the wheel tightly, eyes still on the road. “Do you think you’ll ever trust me enough to tell me what actually happened between the two of you?”

I shrug and look back out the window, unsure of my answer. “I don’t know. Because the answer is that
nothing
happened between us. That’s the problem.” It’s still unclear how I’m supposed to apologize for walking away from a friendship without any explanation, because it was best for me at the time, and best for him in the long run.

I have three days to figure out the words to say it, though.

There’s a part of me that has wanted to look at Wendy’s journals when Audrey has left them unattended so that I can see what she’s reading while I drive or when she’s having one of her quiet moments. I know how bothered I would be if I found anyone looking through my dad’s stuff though, so I don’t.

The first letters he sent weren’t much, just blue pages saying how much he missed my mom. They’d always start with “Roseanna baby,”and they’d always end with “All my love, Pete.” That first deployment was directly after 9/11, and his unit was one of the first ones in—mobile and unestablished—so we couldn’t call. Couldn’t send mail. We could only receive it. He’d send small letters for me, too, but they weren’t much, just enough for me to read that he missed me.

The deployments weren't long, but they were back to back, and in a two year span he did three deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan. My mom had been glued to the television, watching reports as hostages were rescued and bombs were detonated. Each time the doorbell rang, she would go pale, and now I know what she was waiting for, but at the time, it was usually just my friends coming over to play. I didn’t understand her anxiousness until I got much older.

He was on his final deployment when it happened. A car bomb at a check point. You’re not allowed a lot of information, and they keep secrets about plenty of things that happen overseas, but the way my father died was heroic, and they were sure to tell me that at his funeral. That he’d died running toward the other men in his unit, trying to save their lives. His name lives on, printed on silver bracelets that his friends wear in his memory, along with the five other men that died that day.

He left behind a grieving wife, a confused eight-year-old son, a box of letters, and a photo album full of pictures of him in Afghanistan with people he considered his brothers. Face covered in dirt and sun beating down on everything. He was proud. He was doing something.

Part of me hopes that by doing this thing for Audrey, that maybe I’m doing something, too. Something my dad would be proud of. He’d always been so supportive of my interests and how my brain functioned, my love of building and how I wanted to know exactly how everything worked. I’d spend hours building Legos and wait until I could barely keep my eyes open just to hear him come through the door and tell me that I was the best builder he’d ever seen.

My game is not in memoriam. It’s in his honor.

Sitting at the small desk in a cheap hotel just outside of Mobile, Alabama, I remind myself of that as I put the final touches on a character that looks exactly like my father. His eyes stare back at me from the screen, eerily lifelike. I don’t know whether to laugh or shut my laptop and take a walk around the pool to clear my head.

Audrey appears at that exact moment, opening the bathroom door, wearing a red sundress. The straps are thin, pulled up and across her back in an interesting pattern that catches my attention when she turns around to check her reflection in the full length mirror. She’d asked to stop at the store on our way into town, and I’d seen her grab the dress along with a few other items, almost like she didn’t want to get it but couldn’t stop herself from buying it.

“I didn’t know if it would fit my boobs,” she says out loud and then turns to me with wide eyes. “Probably not something you’re used to hearing. Sorry about that.” Her cheeks almost match the color of the material she’s wearing. For what it’s worth, it does fit her boobs. Very well, if I’m being honest. Maybe a little too well, according to how fast I have to look away.

“You look pretty,” I say as I save my work and close my laptop. She’s still and staring at me as I turn around to face her again. “What? You do. It’s a good color on you. I like the hair, too.” She bought a box of dye and went one color, a dark brown, almost black, all over, covering the lighter ends. It makes her eyes stand out more.