Starkissed

Starkissed

Brynna Gabrielson

Copyright 2012 Brynna Gabrielson

In loving memory of my mother, Marjorie Gabrielson
.

Chapter One

“Mom!” I scream, storming back into the house.

“What now Sydney?” she strides out of the kitchen, her briefcase in one hand and a coffee mug in the other. “I’m already late for my 8:30 showing.”

“My car is gone.”

“What?”

“My car isn’t in the driveway.”

She frowns, then almost immediately perks up. “That’s right. Ava needed it to drive into Albuquerque this morning. Something about recycling...” She ponders a second then shrugs. “Or maybe it was buying clothes. That girl talks so fast sometimes.”

“But, but…it’s my car. You just let her take my car?” I don’t know why I’m surprised. This isn’t the first time this has happened. Ava can pretty much sweet talk her way into anything, including other people’s belongings.

“She seemed to really need it. Sorry sweetie. You can walk to school can’t you?”

“Maybe if I left half an hour ago. I’m going to miss first bell. You have to drive me.”

“I wish I could but like I said, I’m already late. Call Caroline.”

She heads to the front door and I call after her. “You’re a terrible mother, you know that right?”

“Well that’s my cross to bear” she sighs, then grins. “I won’t see you before you leave for the airport. Have fun in New York. Don’t give Alyssa too much trouble.” She kisses me on the forehead.

I fold my arms across my chest and snort. “I won’t steal her car, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Don’t be silly. Alyssa doesn’t have a car.”

She disappears out the front door. I grab my cell phone from my pocket and dial. “Caroline, I need a ride to school,” I exhale into the phone. “And no I don’t care if you won’t be able to get your Starbucks.”

***

“I’m just saying,” Caroline smirks as we walk down the hall before first period, “you really ought to start hiding your keys a little better.”

“They were in my bag, under my bed...I don’t know how I didn’t hear her take them. She’s like a ninja or something...”

“Those vegetarians are sneaky.”

“Vegetarians? No. Just Ava. Annoying, sneaky Ava. I really wish she’d find some other purpose in life other than stealing my stuff and condemning all of us for eating meat and not recycling.” We stop in front of my locker and I spin the dial while trying to come up with ways to get back at my sister. Three years my senior, she should be off at college or getting a life. She was, for a while there, getting a life that is. She went to Peru after she graduated last year to help bring water to rural villages or something like that. But she’s been back for seven months and since then she’s barely done more than spend Mom and Dad’s money and annoy the hell out of me.

Caroline shakes her head and laughs. I yank my locker door open, shove my bag inside, and slam it shut.

When I look back up at Caroline she’s gazing off over my shoulder.

“Check out your sister.” She nods.

I follow her sight line and spot one of my other sisters, Angelina. She’s fifteen and a year below me in the tenth grade. You’d think being so close in age we’d be friends or something. We’re not. At all. She’s pressed up against some senior I vaguely recognize. He’s wearing a letter jacket so he must be a jock of some variety. Just her type. She grazes her lips over his, teasing him the way she’s so well known for. She pulls away and looks up. For a second her eye catches mine and we stare at one another, but she quickly looks away, pretending I don’t exist. Fine by me. Most of the time I’m pretending she doesn’t exist either.

“I thought she was dating Liam?” Caroline remarks with an unconvincing attempt at nonchalance. Caroline’s been in love with Liam Walker for six months. Angelina and he started dating about five weeks ago and it’s been driving her nuts ever since.

“Uh, they broke up a few days ago, ” I bite my lip. It’s not that I’ve been deliberately lying to Caroline, just kind of hiding the truth. Because well...

“Oh my God, are you serious?” She jumps and her eyes flash with excitement.

Great. This is just what I need. Now she’ll start acting like even more of an idiot around him, convincing herself now that he’s single, he’s just bound to notice her. It won’t happen and her self-confidence will slowly chip away. It sucks because Caroline is really beautiful. She’s tiny 5’2” and no more than a 100 pounds soaking wet. Her mom is Korean and her dad Caucasian, which gives her this fantastic exotic look with greyish purple eyes and silky black hair. But it doesn’t seem to matter how pretty she is, guys like Liam just don’t see her. When she walks in the room their eyes just sort of glaze over. Unfortunately I can relate. I wish she’d like someone like our friend Paul, whom I’m positive is madly in love with her. Not that he’ll admit it. But he becomes twice the klutz he normally is whenever she’s around.

The first bell rings.

“Better get to Algebra,” Caroline says. She snags a tube of lip gloss out of her pocket and applies vigorously. Liam’s in our class.

Before she can ask me any more questions about Angelina and him, I change the subject.

“So any chance you’re free to drive me to the airport tonight?” I ask. “You’d be my bestest friend ever.”

“I’m already your bestest friend ever,” she says. “I thought Ava was taking you.”

“I just finished bitching about how sneaky and annoying she is. Do you really think I want to be trapped in a car with her all the way to the airport?”

“I guess not,” she says. “I can’t believe you’re leaving me for a whole week.”

“It’s not that long. Besides, you’ll have fun here. I heard Zane and Shanae are planning a trip to see the new Star Trek movie tomorrow. Tara, Paul, and Alex are bound to be going too. You should go.”

“I just don’t get why you had to go this week! It’s Spring Break. We always spend Spring Break together. Not to mention the fact that we haven’t even been apart for more than a couple days in like...years.”

“You went to Florida for Christmas...” I remind her. “For three weeks.”

“Oh. Right.” She pouts. I drop behind her as we enter our classroom.

Mr. Hoffman, the usual teacher, isn’t sitting at his desk. I recognize the sub immediately – from the floral print dress clinging to her round body, to the poof of wiry white hair atop her head, curled within an inch of its already decaying life. Delores Wilshire. She used to teach here full time until a couple years ago when she retired, right before I started my freshman year. She turns up as a sub now and again when the school is really desperate.

Caroline meanders over to her seat, casually sweeping her gaze over Liam as she passes his desk. He doesn’t look up.

I walk over to the teacher.

“Um hi, Mrs. Wilshire,” I say. She looks up from the romance novel she seems quite enthralled by and smiles at me with that vague, unsure expression people tend to give when they don’t recognize you. “Hello, dear.”

I reach inside my bag and pull out a thin sheaf of papers comprising my take home test from Wednesday.

“I was away yesterday at the dentist, and Mr. Hoffman wanted me to hand this in today,” I say, handing over the papers. She takes the stack and scans the first page.

“Sydney Kane,” she says slowly, while making a note in the lesson planner Mr. Hoffman keeps on his desk. “I’ll make sure he gets this.”

“Thanks.”

“Kane?” she looks up at me again, sudden interest in her eyes. “You wouldn’t be related to Arianna Kane would you? She was my favorite student here...”

“Um yeah,” I nod, while inwardly griping,
here we go again.

“Cousin?”

“Sister,” I tell her and make note of the surprise on her face.

“You’re one of the Kane sisters?” she asks, as if the very suggestion is impossible. And I get it, I do. See, I have five sisters in total. That’s right, five. We’ll get this out of the way first, I look nothing like them. Each and every one of my sisters – from Alyssa, the oldest, to America, the youngest – is blonde with golden skin that looks a bit tanned year round, and big, vibrant blue eyes. They have perfect dainty noses and full rosebud lips. There are minor differences of course – moles, freckles, body shapes – but at the core they all have those unmistakable Kane looks that are known town wide. Not a single one of them can walk up First Avenue without being noticed. People just seem to be drawn to them.

Then there’s me, pretty much the exact opposite of my sisters, with flat brown hair, so pale – it’s almost translucent – white skin, and kelly-green eyes. I look like a distant cousin rather than a middle sister. Compared to them, I’m just...average. I blend well. Which I guess isn’t so bad, sometimes I prefer it if people can’t tell I’m related to them.

And, by the way, before you go thinking I’m adopted or anything, don’t bother. I’ve already looked in to it. You see all my sisters take after our mom, who’s more beautiful than any of them. She was after all, Miss Alabama 1985. My dad, on the other hand, has the same green eyes as me, and the same hair color. I look a lot like him, but even more so like his mom, my Grandma Sydney – who I’m named for. She died just a few months before I was born. Mom had planned to name me Arlene, but thank goodness for Dad – because who the hell wants to be named Arlene? – he loved his mom and he couldn’t think of a better way to honor her than giving me her name.

In case you haven’t already noticed, my name is just another thing that sets me apart from my sisters. All their names start with A – Alyssa, Arianna, Ava, Angelina, and America. Then there’s me with my big fat ‘S’. Mom hates it; I ruin the set, although she won’t say it out loud. Besides, the fact that my name starts with ‘S’ probably doesn’t matter considering ‘the set’ when you take in the fact that I look more like Sandra Bullock’s child than hers.

“So what is Arianna up to these days?” Mrs. Wilshire interrupts my inner rant.

“Oh,” I shrug, “she’s still at Harvard. Studying law.”

“Of course. She was always so very smart. Always aced my tests. I knew she’d do something amazing like that.”

I nod along, but slowly turn my body away from her and start inching toward my seat. It’s no use. She hurls another question at me and I’m forced to turn back. “And what about Alyssa?”

“She’s in New York, she’s a photographer for
Catwalk Magazine
right now...”

“How wonderful!”

“Yeah,” I agree. Alyssa is my favorite sister. Probably because she’s seven years older than me and thus we were never close enough in age to really piss each other off. Not like me and Ava, or me and Angelina.

“And Ava? What’s she doing these days?”

God does this woman know my entire family? Am I going to have to go through the whole fricking roster?

“Ava just got back from Peru,” I tell her. “She was helping build wells in villages or something like that...”

“So heroic,” Mrs. Wilshire says breathily while slapping her right hand across her chest, as if Ava’s just touched her heart. In an effort not to look bitter, I don’t roll my eyes.

All the other students have taken their seats and the bell rings. I try to move toward my desk again, but my attempt in thwarted.

“And I saw Angelina on my way in this morning. Such a wonderful cheerleader, she’ll be something one day.”

“Oh she’s is...
something
already.” I clench my teeth. Everyone’s looking at us. I tap my foot anxiously against the floor and twist my fingers together.

And last but not least...

“And I hear America is really causing a big kafuffle with her soccer playing.”

I hate my life. America, at age twelve, has accomplished more in her short existence than I probably ever will. She’s always been athletic, but she’s a real star when it comes to soccer. She even made some sort of national team thingy this summer. College scouts are already watching her and rumor has it that last fall Mr. Hewitt, the
boys'
soccer coach here, tried to convince the junior high administration to bump her up a couple grades so she could play on his team.

Mr. Hewitt was my P.E. teacher last year. When I didn’t prove to be as athletic as America, or at least as lithe as Angelina, he completely wrote me off and spent the entire semester ignoring me.

“Well I guess I should sit down,” I say, with a bit of force, to Mrs. Wilshire, while praying she won’t ask for an update on my mother.

“Oh right. Of course.” She nods and waves her hand a bit, as if shooing me toward my seat. “It was a nice talk Shelley.”

I walk to my desk.
Shelley?
Seriously? After all that, she just called me Shelley?

***

When the final class of the day ends Spring Break is officially upon us. The energy in the hall in practically crackling and Caroline and I ride the buzz all the way to our lockers. Even though she’s still pissed I’m abandoning her, she can’t keep the giddy smile off her face. I’m not sure if she’s so happy because we’re off school for the week, or because Liam accidentally knocked into her before last class and said, “sorry,” in her general direction.

Just as I’m prying open my locker door, Paul swoops over and smiles at the two of us.

“Plans for tonight ladies?” He cocks his eyebrows and attempts to suavely lean against the locker beside Caroline’s. He slips and bangs his shoulder. Caroline and I attempt to hold back our giggles while he straightens himself. “I was thinking of having a little X-Men marathon,” he says. “But no
Wolverine
,” he looks at Caroline pointedly. She hates
Wolverine
and thinks it’s some sort of besmirching on the X-Men franchise.

“We can’t, I’m driving Sydney to the airport,” Caroline tells him. “Sorry.”

“Oh, right,” his shoulders sag and the smile he was sporting starts to melt away. Poor guy. If only Caroline would fall for him the way he’s fallen for her. He’s so sweet and smart, and he’s not bad looking at all. When he wears his glasses he reminds me of Clark Kent...kind of…well slightly.

“Are you going to
Star Trek
tomorrow?” He asks her. “Zane said you might come.”

“Yep,” she nods.

“Good,” his smile returns. He bids us a goodbye, quickly hugging me and wishing me a good trip, and then drifts off with the tide of students heading for the front door.

“What time’s your flight?” Caroline asks.

“Eight I think. The only way Mom would send me is if I flew on points. By the time I make it to La Guardia it’s something like four in the morning.”

“Gross.”

“At least I only have one connection this way. Next Sunday I have three or four.”

I close my locker and hoist my bag, weighed down with every textbook and notebook I possess, over my shoulder. Just because it’s Spring Break, it doesn’t mean the teachers are forgiving. I have a history essay, two books to read for English, a chapter of Algebra questions, and a monologue to memorize.

Down the hall some over enthusiastic senior has torn off his shirt and is rushing around screaming and woohooing.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Caroline says, eyes lingering on the offending senior’s six pack for half a second before she speeds off down the hall.

“Yes, let’s.” I follow.