Steering the Stars (9 page)

        “Hannah?” I cried. “Tell me you aren’t developing a crush on someone’s grandfather.”

        She chuckled. “Calm down, Care. I’m not completely crazy,” she assured me. “Anyway, squash is going to suck but at least it will help me make friends.”

        Friends?
A weird knot formed in my belly. “Sure.”

     
 
“Yeah,” Hannah said casually and I could almost see her shrugging on the other end of the phone. “There’s this girl Tillie, who’s basically adopted me. I think you’d love her. And this guy named Ruben. He looks like he spent the summer working on magic tricks and reading comics but he’s really nice.”

       “Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. Hannah was in a foreign country and she was already making friends. I had lived in the same place all my life and I was eating lunch alone. How did that make any sense?

       “But, seriously, enough about me. Other than the horrible theater class, how is your day going?”

       I looked around the commons area. “Oh, you know… it’s going.” I took a deep breath. “Actually, I’m at lunch right now and I’m eating al—”

       “Crap!” Hannah cut me off roughly. I heard muffled laughter and voices I didn’t recognize.

       “Hannah?” I called. “Are you still there?”

       “Hey, sorry about that,” she said, coming back onto the line. “I’m babysitting and the girls were asking me to come downstairs with them. So what were you saying, Care?”

I struggled to keep my voice even. “No. You go deal with your nieces, I have to get going anyway.”

       “You sure you’re okay?”

     
 
“Of course.”

       “All right, then.” She hesitated. “We’ll talk soon?

       “Yes, definitely!”

       “Okay—bye!”

       I kept the phone up to my ear even after she’d hung up. It was weird. After talking to her, I felt a mixture of better and worse. Better because she always made me smile. Worse because talking to her on the phone made her absence even more pronounced.

       It certainly sounded like she was having a much easier time with our separation than I was. I mean…she was in a different country participating in extracurricular activities and making friends with new people. God, the only people I had talked to today were Henry and Miles.  

       Feeling depressed about my downward spiral into loserdom, I absently took a bite of my hamburger. Ketchup squirted out the side of the bun and a red glob of the stuff landed on my jeans. I dropped my phone and reached for a napkin and that’s when I noticed that the commons area was already buzzing with people returning from lunch. Crapolla. I quickly checked the time and realized that I had two minutes to get to my next class. I wiped the ketchup from my jeans and shoved my phone into my bag  before leaping up with my tray. I turned around and slammed into something solid. The rest of my lunch spilled all over the front of my shirt.

       “Arrgghh!” I shrieked.

       “In a hurry?”

     
 
I knew that voice.

       “French fries look good on you,” Henry said, smiling at me.

     
 
“Oh that—I, uh… I was chatting with Hannah and I guess I lost track of time,” I stammered, swinging my bag with one arm onto my back. I wanted to get away from here and try to forget this whole mortifying encounter had ever happened. Scratch that. I wanted to forget this entire day had happened.

       “Wait, Caroline!”

       I turned back to Henry. “Huh?”

       “You—uh—got something right there.” He pointed to a spot on his chin and I remembered the ketchup.

       “Oh my God.” I used my hand to wipe it off. Gross. A stop to the restroom was in order before class.

       “And...uh…right there…”  he said, waving his hand in front of my grease and ketchup splattered shirt.

      “Well, isn’t this just great? Agh! Worst day ever!” I used the handful of napkins to wipe off the excess mess but my shirt was still stained. My eyes burned and my face flamed cherry red.

       “Here,” he said, lifting his sweatshirt over his head and handing it to me. “Wear this.”

       “I’ll get gunk all over it,” I said, backing up.

       “It’ll wash.”

     
 
“Are you sure?”

       “Care, just put it on.”

       “Thanks.” I pulled his sweatshirt on over my dirty shirt. It was soft and fleecy on the inside and it smelled like him. It took some major willpower but I managed to refrain from pulling the fabric up to my nose to inhale in front of him.

       “It fits,” he joked.

       I glanced down. The bottom of the sweatshirt hung over my thighs. “Do I look ridiculous? I do, don’t I? I look like an oompa loompa.”

       “Nah,” he said, giving me an appreciative smile that made me forget how to breathe for a second.

       “Well, I gotta go,” I said, half-waving. Could he know how rattled I am right now? “Thanks for the sweatshirt. And the coffee. Oh, and the ride.”
       He looked amused. “Anytime.”

       Before I could go even redder or blow a gasket, I pushed past Henry and made a beeline for the closest restroom to splash water on my face. I was a mess. And I was totally going to be late to fifth period.

       I didn’t think there had ever been a worse first day of school in the history of first days of school. It was the pits. Maybe in the grand scheme of things, a crappy first day was low on the totem pole of significance but it still sucked. Royally.

****

When the final bell of the day rang, I bolted down the loud crowded hallway past lockers and students gathering up their books.

       This morning, Henry had said he’d give me a ride home, but I hadn't seen him since the ketchup incident, and I definitely didn’t want to face him now. What would I do anyway? Stand around his locker like a groupie hoping he hadn’t changed his mind?
No thank you!

       It was still raining so at the school entrance, I popped open my umbrella and jogged down the concrete steps, feeling the water slosh around my ankles and soak into my socks. The entire wet, soggy ten and a half blocks home, I thought about how awful school had been. Worse than I’d even imagined… And I’d imagined it going pretty badly.

       Was this what every day without Hannah and Owen was going to be like? Could I even handle that? Maybe I should talk to my dad about homeschooling this semester. Of course, that meant talking to my dad, which was something that did not happen. Not ever.

       I reached the sidewalk in front of my house and turned up the walk and that’s when I noticed the lock on the fence to our backyard was hanging at an odd angle and the gate was wide open. It looked like a limb from one of the trees had smashed into it. A stab of panic shot through my stomach.

     
 
“Noooo!” I threw my bag and umbrella unceremoniously down on the bowed wooden planks of the front porch and ran toward the backyard to confirm what I already knew.

     
 
“Aspen!” I yelled. “Aspen!” I scanned my surroundings trying to figure out where I should start looking. I had no idea how long she had been missing. I must've forgot to put her back inside this morning which meant she could be anywhere by now. I grabbed the leash hanging by the back door and took off.

     
 
As I jogged down the street, I panted and desperately called her name. “Aspen!”

     
 
About two blocks from home, I caught sight of her nosing around someone’s backyard.

        “Come here, girl!” I tried to keep my voice happy.

      
 
Nothing.

     
 
“Aspen!” I slapped my thighs.

     
 
This time she perked her head and wagged her red and white tail, but she still didn’t come.

       I started to skip in place and move my arms. “Come here, pretty girl!”

     
 
Her pink tongue fell out of her mouth and her blue eyes met mine with what was undeniably excitement.

       “Come on!” I encouraged.

     
 
She took a step toward me—then darted in the opposite direction.

     
 
“No-no-no-no!” I cried in defeat and dropped my hands.

     
 
Why would she do this to me? I walked that dog every day. I fed her and let her sleep in my bed and rubbed her belly when she begged.

        I pulled myself together and took off after her. Honestly, it wasn’t her fault. I never should have relied on Dad to replace the lock on the gate when I asked him a few weeks ago. I should have just gone to the hardware store and bought a few screws and replaced it myself.

     
 
That was the first thing I was going to do when I found the damn dog. Well, maybe the second. A hot shower was first.

      
 
The rain had died down but I was still soaked by the time I turned back onto my street. My hair was plastered to my forehead and my eyelashes were heavy with raindrops. I blew out a gush of air, pushed my hair out of my eyes and continued scanning yards.

     
 
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and turned. She was standing on the sidewalk maybe ten feet away from me.
     
 
“Aspen!” I held up her blue leather leash which she associated with our walks in hopes that she’d had enough of the game and would come.

      
 
No such luck.

     
 
She hopped to the right and then to the left as though encouraging me to play along. I darted forward, reaching for her collar but she was too fast.  

     
 
“Need some help?” A familiar voice came from behind me.

     
 
“Henry,” I said his name in greeting. “What are you doing here?”

     
 
“I didn't see you after school. I was worried you tried to walk home in the rain and it looks like I was right.”

     
 
“It’s not raining that hard anymore.”

     
 
“Caroline, you’re dripping.”

     
 
I looked down. At least I wasn’t wearing a white shirt. That’s when a realization hit. “Oh no, your sweatshirt! I’m sorry. I meant to give it back to you but...” I groaned.

     
 
“It’ll dry,” he said, chuckling. “You look like you just went for a swim in Grand Lake.”

     
 
“That’s because my dog—” I gestured over my shoulder.

     
 
“I can see that.”

     
 
“The lock on the gate is broken and I think the storm blew it open. She took off and now it's pretty much hopeless. At this rate, I could be chasing her all night.”

       “Let me try. That dog loves me.”

       “Aspen loves everyone—she just loves running more.”

       “She and I have that in common,” he said with a wry grin.

       Despite the situation, I laughed. It was true. Henry was one of the stars of the track team. Hannah told me there’d been an informal vote over the summer and it was almost a sure thing that he’d be named team captain before the season started in the spring.

       “Did she go that way?” he asked, pointing toward the direction Aspen took off in.

       “Yeah, I think so.”

       “Let’s go get her,” he said confidently.

       We poked around the neighborhood for another five minutes before Henry spotted her sitting on a porch under a swinging bench like nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

       “Aspen!” I called out in relief.

       This time, she bounded our way, jumping up on Henry so that her paws touched his shoulders. While he rubbed her head, I snapped the leash on her collar.

       “Told ya,” he said as she licked his face.

        I rolled my eyes and pulled on the leash. “C'mon…”

        “So, how was the first day?” Henry asked as we walked to my house.

       “Awful.”

       “It couldn’t have been that bad,” he said with a laugh.

       “Didn’t you see me at lunch with ketchup all over myself?” I complained. “And that was after I ate all alone.”

       “You’re always welcome at my table.”

       “Don't,” I said sharply.

       “Don't what?” he asked, baffled by my reaction.