Steering the Stars (10 page)

       “Don't do the whole pity offer thing,” I told him. “It makes me feel pathetic.”

       “Caroline, that wasn’t a pity offer.”

       I wasn’t buying what he was selling, but I wasn’t going to be a jerk about it. “Sure, I’ll keep it in mind.”

       “Okay, then.”

       “Okay.” We had reached my yard.

       “So, show me this broken gate,” Henry said.

       “Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “I’m going to take a shower right now. I’ll figure it out later and go get screws or whatever I need.”             

       Henry nodded slowly. “All right. And what car are you going to use to get there?”

       “That’s right,” I said exasperatedly. “My life!”

        He chuckled. “Come on. Why don’t you get Aspen inside and go change while I look at the gate. Then we can hit the store and get it over with.”

       “I can’t let you do that.”

       “You’re not
letting
me do anything.”

       “But—”

       “Get upstairs and change!” He placed his hands on my lower back and pushed.

       Laughing, I shouted back, “I’m going! I’m going!”

     
 
Ten minutes later, I was in a dry long-sleeved shirt and a fresh pair of jeans, riding in the passenger seat of Henry’s car.

        Libby Park slipped by as I peered out the window. I had lived here my entire life and, really, nothing had changed. It was the kind of place where people got in each other’s business. We had block parties and bingo nights and summer carnivals. Life here revolved around high school sports and stupid gossip like whether or not Mr. and Mrs. Finnegan, the couple who owned the small grocery store on the corner of Malvern Road and Hill Street, were going to get that divorce they’d been threatening for years now.

       Most of the stores were locally owned places that had been run by the same family for generations. At least we had a Starbucks, but it seemed like nothing new or exciting ever came. I’d been dreaming about a movie theater with stadium seating for years but, heck, I’d settle for a P.F. Chang’s or a Hobby Lobby.

       “We’re going to be able to repair the existing lock instead of buying a new one so why don’t you look for these nuts and bolts,” Henry told me when we walked into the hardware store. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bolt and a rusted metal circle. I held out my hand and he pressed the metal pieces into my palm, our fingers brushing.

       I had the craziest thought about how easy it would be to wind the rest of our fingers together. And, like I was watching someone else’s hand, I saw my palm press gently against his.

     
 
Henry startled before subtly pulling back. “Get four that are this size.”

       I wanted to die. What was wrong with me? Had I completely lost my ever-loving mind? Was Hannah’s absence leaving me so starved for attention that I was baiting her older brother into touching me?

       Cheeks flaming, I managed to squeak out a weak, “Okay.”

     
 
“I’m going to go get WD-40 and a bottle of Gorilla Glue.”

     
 
“Uh-huh.”

     
 
“You sure you got that?”

       I tried to cover up my mortification by haughtily saying, “I know my way around the hardware store. My dad’s a contractor. Remember? He used to bring me with him all the time when I was a kid.”

     
 
Henry smiled. “Then I’ll find you in a few minutes.”

     
 
“Sure,” I responded, walking away.

       It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. I had been telling the truth about knowing my way around building supplies because of my dad. He used to love having me tag along. But that was before.

       As I turned over the nuts and bolts in my hand and looked down the aisle for Henry, I noticed a man in a motorized cart attempting to get around a tight corner. It looked like he was struggling and I saw that the bottom of his cart was caught on a display attached to the end of the aisle.

     
 
“Excuse me,” I said politely.

       He didn’t look up. He put the cart in reverse to try to turn back. When he didn’t have any luck, he switched gears and tried again to go forward. The cart’s wheels spun for a moment against the grey linoleum and then suddenly caught.

     
 
“Wait—” I started, but it was too late.

     
 
The entire display came crashing to the ground with a loud crack. Thousands of shiny silver screws spilled across the floor, rolling down the aisle and over my feet.

     
 
“Crap on a cracker,” I breathed.

     
 
The man didn’t stop there. Trying to correct his mistake, he ran into the shelf in front of him, toppling over a stand of wooden dowels.

       “Do you see what you made me do?” he yelled accusingly.

     
 
Startled, I looked over my shoulder. “What are you…?
Me
?”

       His glare deepened. “You were standing in my way.”

       I was a good five feet from him. “But—I—I—I’m sorry?”

       By then, two employees had rushed over and were helping the a-hole toward the checkout. They tried to calm him as he grumbled about
aisle width
and
little girls who had no sense of personal space.

     
 
I was left standing among the spilled screws and dowels trying to wrap my head around what had just happened. I knew I hadn’t done a thing wrong, but I still felt partially to blame, like just the act of witnessing had made me responsible for the mess. I was sure that an employee would come back in a second to start picking up, but what if someone else walked down the aisle and slipped on one of the fallen screws? What if a toddler cracked his head open? What if an elderly lady with a walker lost her balance and broke her hip?

       I couldn’t live with the risk, so I got down on my hands and knees and began to move the screws into tiny, manageable piles.

     
 
“Um…” I heard a throat being cleared and looked up. Henry was towering over me.

     
 
“Why are you so tall?” I asked.

     
 
“It only seems that way because you’re so short,” he said, staring down at me. “And because you’re on the ground.”

     
 
I surveyed the huge mess. “I…”

     
 
“So, what’s the deal?”

     
 
“It’s not what you think. I don’t need a screw.”

       Smile lines appeared at the sides of his eyes.

     
 
“That’s not—” I choked a little on my spit. “You know I didn’t mean it that way. Well, I mean... I really
don’t
need a screw—oh… crap... just—whatever.”

       It was obvious Henry was trying really hard not to laugh. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Care. And get off the floor.”

       He held out his hand, which I grabbed and let him pull me up into a more dignified standing position.

       “Do I even want to know what happened back there?” he asked as we walked up to the register.

      
 
I gave an emphatic shake of my head. “No.”

     
 
“That’s what I thought.”

        On the drive back, Henry explained that he was taking a carpentry class this semester. “I’m learning my way around power tools,” he explained as he turned the car onto my street. “So fixing the lock is going to be no problem.”

     
 
“I’m not worried,” I assured him.

       By the time we reached my house, the sun was setting. The storm was long gone and the late afternoon sky was purplish and laced with thick, dusty golden clouds.

       After some discussion about placement, Henry and I positioned the lock in a new spot and measured out the holes for the bolts.

     
 
“Do you have the drill?”

     
 
“Yeah,” I said, passing it forward. I’d grabbed it from my dad’s supply of backup tools and had already fitted it with the right bit to make the holes for the bolts.

     
 
Henry leaned over the fence post. In the diffused light, his hair looked even lighter than usual, like ripened wheat. His face was strained in concentration. I watched him depress the trigger on the drill and—

     
 
“What the hell?”

       
 
I examined the drill. “It’s on the wrong setting.”

        He shook his head. “What?”

      
 
“Here,” I offered, moving in so that our bodies were touching along one side. I pointed to the black button on the side of the drill. “You have to make sure the direction is going the right way or it won’t work properly. It was on reverse.”

     
 
Henry looked at me like I’d sprouted elephant ears.

     
 
“What?” I asked, feeling my cheeks heat.

     
 
“You do know tools.”

     
 
“Don’t look so shocked. Just try it again and I’ll supervise.”

     
 
“And you promise not to tell anyone that you needed to help me use a power tool? Because I’d never live that down.”

     
 
I put a hand to my chest. “I wouldn’t dare.”

       He laughed.

     
 
When the project was done, Henry stayed to watch Aspen play in the yard. Eventually, though, the streetlamps kicked on out front and we both knew it was time to call it a night.

     
 
“I gotta get going,” he said.

     
 
“Yeah—me too. I have to get dinner started for my dad and me. He’ll be home any minute so we can eat.”  

     
 
That was only a half-truth. It was true that I usually made dinner, but my father and I hadn’t actually eaten a meal together in years. Most of the time, I just left him a plate on the counter covered in foil and ate by myself in my room watching movies or doing my homework.

     
 
But I didn’t want Henry to know all that, so I made a point to keep my voice upbeat.

     
 
“Okay, well…” he said as he started walking toward where his car was parked in the drive. “This was good.”

     
 
“Yeah,” I agreed.

     
 
“You sound almost surprised.”

       “No, I was just thinking that school sucked with Hannah being gone, and the whole mess up with my schedule, and finding out I have to participate in a musical to pass a class, and then Aspen getting out,” I rambled things off. “But you’re right—this was good.”

     
 
He grinned. “And tomorrow will be better.”

     
 
I shrugged. “Maybe.

     
 
“Just stay away from any geriatrics on scooters and you’ll be fine,” he said, opening his car door.

       “But, I thought…” I was taken aback. “You saw that?”

       Henry made a what-do-I-look-like face. “Of course I did. It was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.”

       When his car door slammed shut, I was both cringing and laughing.

       He was right.

     
 
It
was
funny.

     
 
I laughed so hard that I had to squeeze my arms around my stomach as I walked back toward the empty house. It was crazy that after such a horrible Hannah-less day I could feel so good.

      
 
And that had everything to do with Henry.

 

To: Hannah<
[email protected]
>

From: Caroline<
[email protected]
>

Date: September 6

Subject: Postcard!

Got your postcard! Loved it! I pinned it to the bulletin board over my bed.

Did I tell you Miles, your super hot but stupid lab partner from last year, is the teacher’s aid for my theater class? But I don’t think he’s as bad as you thought. He’s actually kind of fun.

xoxo
____________

To: Owen<
[email protected]
>

From: Hannah<
[email protected]
>

Date: September 7

Subject: Knock knock

-Who’s there?

-Cows go.

-Cows go who?

-Nope. Cows go mooooooo!

Bad joke but you have to remember that I’m living with two little girls now and they LOVE knock knock jokes. They also love unicorns and rainbows and cats dressed in clothes. But, anywhooooo... WHY are you still ignoring me? For how long??? I’m not saying that I don’t deserve it but you can’t just ignore me forever.

Hannah

____________

To: Hannah<
[email protected]
>

From Henry<
[email protected]
>

Date: September 8

Subject: Waz up

Jellybean,

How’s life? I heard through the grapevine that you broke some kid’s nose? Was it self-defense or you just didn’t like the looks of him?

____________

To: Henry<
[email protected]
>

From: Hannah<
[email protected]
>

Date: September 9

Subject: Re: Waz up

Brother dearest,

Now you know the truth. The real reason I moved to London was to hone my Krav Maga skills.

I’m coming for you next...

____________

Okay, I didn’t break his nose, but my racquet did leave a wicked bruise under his left eye that showed for the rest of the week.

       I learned the American boy’s name was Joel Sinclair and that he was in upper sixth, the year above me. In the States, that would have made him a senior.

     
 
According to Ruben and Tillie, Joel had been a student at Warriner for over a year so I couldn’t understand why he didn’t seem to have any friends. There were rumors of course. First, I heard from someone “in the know” that he was a reformed drug dealer. Someone else said he was actually a politician’s son. Then there was the one about him being gay. Being some kind of juvenile delinquent. Having a mild form of Asperger’s.

     
 
I figured most of it was a joke and the rest was exaggeration to the tenth power but that didn’t mean that I didn’t want to hear it. Joel was different. Interesting. In a room full of noisy, gossiping teenagers, he was the quiet one. That made him stand out, which in turn, made him the subject of speculation.

     
 
He always carried a notebook with him, tucked under one arm or gripped tightly in his hand. Sometimes he wrote in it. Sometimes he drew. Sometimes he just stared down at a blank page like he was waiting for something to appear there. And maybe he was. I couldn’t be sure.

     
 
What I was sure about was that I liked to watch him. I liked to watch him move through the halls between classes and dodge shots on the squash court. I liked to watch him in the cafeteria where, in classic loner style, he ate alone, preferring a pen and paper to human companionship.

     
 
Joel Sinclair was odd. Mysterious. Artsy in a non-emo kind of way. I couldn’t quite explain it, but even wearing the exact same uniform as everyone else at Warriner, he seemed… out of place or something. Like he didn’t belong among us. Like his thoughts were sailing on a far, far away ocean and he wished he could join them.

       On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays we shared one class together—Theory and Practice of Fiction, which was pretty much a workshop where Mr. Hammond talked a lot about the voice, tone, and pacing of our writing. Then he’d assign us a word count and maybe a genre and we were expected to come up with something amazing to bring to the next class.

       More often than they should have, I found my eyes wandering to where Joel sat with his back to a window and his black hair framed by the dull sky.

        What was he thinking?

        I was mulling over this question during the second week of school when Mr. Hammond’s voice snapped me out of my reverie.

        “Now, what you’ve all been waiting for,” he boomed, moving between the rows of desks and passing out papers from a stack he carried. “It’s peer review time.”

        Even though I had a pretty good idea what was happening, I leaned toward Tillie’s desk and asked anyway, “What’s a peer review?”

        “I think he means he’s going to have us read each other’s stories.”

        Dread settled in my gut. Tillie must have noticed.

      
 
“It will be fine,” she said quietly. “No one pays much attention to whose paper they get.”

      
 
That felt like the kind of lie that a smiling dentist tells you before pulling out a needle and a torque wrench.
You won’t feel a thing. Maybe just a little pinch.

        I was calling bullshit on all of it.

     
 
Mr. Hammond reached my desk and handed me a piece of paper. “We’ll take ten minutes to read and another ten minutes to write comments,” were his instructions. “These are the writing prompts you worked on at the end of class on Monday.”

     
 
What?
My eyes darted around the class. I had stupidly assumed that Mr. Hammond was the only one who would be reading those stories and now, as I wondered who had my paper, a gnarled vine of dismay was wrapping itself around my lungs and squeezing.

       It’s not that what I’d written was inappropriate or too personal or anything like that. It was just… not good.

     
 
Of course, the insanely obscure prompt hadn’t helped much.

     
 
You are a tree.

     
 
A
tree
? Really—what could I do with that?

     
 
In the end, I’d scraped out five paragraphs of the beginning of a
Lord of the Rings
type fantasy, using a watchful tree as the narrator. It wasn’t until after I had turned in the paper that I remembered trees were stationary and my big adventure story was, quite literally, going nowhere.

      
 
Hemingway I was not.

     
 
Mr. Hammond paused at the front of the room. “When you’ve completed the critique, please bring it to my desk and I will return to you the short stories that you handed in last week.”

     
 
Two rows over, Ava raised her hand.

     
 
He pointed to her. “Miss Cameron?”

     
 
“Are the short stories graded?”

     
 
“Yes, they are. I wanted you to have some idea of how my grading system works before we get into the larger tasks.”

       Inwardly, I groaned. I was already struggling with the small exercises like the prompts and journaling he’d asked us to do. And I’d agonized for three days over that short story assignment—reworking a two-thousand-word detective story over and over until I thought my brain would break. A “meatier” task sounded light years beyond my abilities at this point.

      
 
My lips felt sticky. I licked them and tried to focus on the story that was waiting on my desk but I got tripped up on the first line. More specifically, on a name written in even block letters.

      
 
Joel Sinclair
.

      
 
Once I realized whose paper I was looking at, everything else shifted. My heart went
thumpty thump.
My throat went raw. The classroom noise faded to the recesses of my mind. I stopped worrying about who was looking at my story. I didn’t think about my grade in the class or about squash or how grey and rainy London was or about Owen or why my sister had barely spoken to me since she’d picked me up from the airport.

        I read.

        Then I read it again.

      
 
Joel’s story started out simply enough and was just eleven paragraphs told from the perspective of a tree growing in a cemetery. Through the seasons, the tree watched an endless procession of graves being dug and people being buried. It saw grown men in dark suits cry. It witnessed a small child in a tiny overcoat leave a white rose on his sister’s casket. It stood silently by as lovers, co-workers, family, and sometimes enemies said their final goodbyes.

     
 
Maybe all of this sounds morbid but it wasn’t. The arrangement and the words were lyrical—almost poetic. The vignettes were honest and poignant and by the end of class, I was sure of one thing: Joel Sinclair was a writer. A real one.

        I stayed at my desk until the rest of the students had finished and were already filing out of the classroom. Gripping Joel’s story, which I had only critiqued with generic suggestions like
expand
and
interesting
, I shuffled to Mr. Hammond’s desk. He was bent over writing something in the margin of a large grade book.

       “I’m done,” I said, holding out the paper. “Though I doubt my critique will be much help.”

       He looked up and when he saw me, he smiled. “Just set it down there and—” he rifled through an olive green file folder, “—here’s your short story. Hannah, I’d like to see you dig deeper next time.”

      
Dig deeper?
With trembling fingers, I flipped the paper over and saw the letter D. I gulped and squeezed my eyes shut.

       The grading system here was slightly different than in the US but a D was still a terrible grade. So much for trying to impress my teacher by joining the squash team.