Kiss the Stars (Devon Slaughter Book 1) (2 page)

I was so filled
with her heartbeat, I almost felt ignored when she headed straight for the sofa
without even glancing in my direction. I expected her to sit down but she didn’t.
She reached for the phone. The towel slipped and she caught it, as if she
imagined someone watched.

Under the dusky
light of the chandelier, I could picture her on a movie screen. She had that
kind of old fashioned movie star quality, like Marilyn Monroe or Lauren Bacall,
only more vulnerable.

At home I had a
projector and a screen hanging down my wall. On the nights I couldn’t stand to
go out, I played old movies. I wanted them to evoke something in me, some kind
of human emotion but they never did. And yet, in her presence my heart thumped.
I was revved up like a teenager.

She dialed the
same number as before. I could tell from counting the clicks. I had perfect
recall. Sometimes it came in handy but mostly it wasn’t as great as you might
think. I was afraid I would go on forever, remembering the most useless things.
I would be a computer, storing data, while my humanity slipped away year by
year, eon by eon.

I wasn’t even
sure I was immortal but it looked as if there wasn’t much that could hurt me.
Once, I’d worked up the nerve to stab myself in the hand with a knife. Blood
spurted but when I pulled out the knife, the wound closed, as if it had never
been.

I could also
leap as high as a three story building and move like a ninja, without making a
single sound. I saw in the dark, like a cat. I could hear across miles, when I
felt like it.

“Hello? Henry?”
she said. “It’s me…Ruby!”

I tuned in to
eavesdrop. But there was no one on the other end of the line.

“Um. Well,
anyway,” she went on. “I was just thinking…
of you
.”

I WOKE with his
name on my tongue.

“Henry,” I
whispered, lying in the dark, staring up at the ceiling. I turned my head to
see the glowing face of my alarm clock. 6:01. Like usual, I couldn’t sleep.
Only when the rest of the world was waking, did I begin to feel tired. It was
like driving through life in the wrong lane. I had SPD (Sleep Phase Disorder)
according to my shrink. Shrink was what my mother used to call her therapist to
make us laugh.

By the time I
had my own shrink (Dr. Ess), my mother was gone and my grandmother didn’t think
it was so funny. “Darling, he’s a highly trained professional. Here to help
you.”

So you don’t
end up like your mother
.

Personally, I
thought not sleeping at night was just a bad habit. I couldn’t remember ever
going to bed as a child, brushing my teeth and combing my hair, being tucked
in, begging for a night light. I took long naps during the day, anywhere I
happened to get tired—in the big velvet chair by the fire or on a soft patch of
grass in the sunshine.

At night, my
mother kept me awake with her. We looked up at the stars. It was only the black
of the sky that made the stars so bright, my mother said. She was always
looking for beauty in dark places.

Outside my
bedroom, in the hallway, paintings of my mother still hung and probably would
forever. Her lover, Javier, painted them. She had been his muse.

I didn’t like
the paintings but I couldn’t take them down. I hadn’t done anything with the house
since my grandmother died, except get rid of the help.

I forced myself
to envision Henry kissing me under the marquee of the art deco movie theater.
He had shaggy blonde hair, a strong jaw and light eyes. He wore Oxford shirts
tucked into khakis.

Behind my closed
lids, I saw the man who had changed my tire. His name whispered inside me.
Devon
.

I was glad he
turned out to be nice because something wasn’t right about him. He was almost
too nice. No, that wasn’t it. He was too beautiful to be wandering the streets
at night, like a lost soul.

Lost souls can’t
be beautiful?

I shivered. I
knew exactly what was wrong with him. No one’s adolescent fantasy just appears
one night, walking out of your dream. It was actually a lesson plan for later
in the semester. Surrealism: the artistic attempt to resolve the previously
contradictory conditions of dream and reality.

I’m losing
it.

I got out of bed
and went to the window. The floor was cold under my bare feet. I parted the
curtains. The sun was rising, about the time I would normally fall asleep. I
returned to bed.

At 7:37 the
alarm went off and I yanked it from the wall. Sweat beaded on my skin.

I couldn’t
escape the feeling of being watched, as if there was an unseen presence in the
room. When I got out of the bath, I heard the sound of breath. I whirled around
but caught only my distorted face in the steamy mirror.

Stop it,
Ruby. Just stop it.

I slipped my
watch around my wrist and took a lot of care with my make-up, applying two
coats of mascara.

I cinched my robe
and went downstairs to make coffee. After stirring in cream and sugar, I sat on
the sofa, listening to the greatest hits by the
Goo Goo Dolls
. My foot
tapped to the music. I couldn’t sit still. I got up and organized my valise.

At 9:03, I ate
my usual work day breakfast; Greek yogurt, dried figs and cranberries. I opened
a bar of dark chocolate and took it with me upstairs, where I lounged in bed,
reading
Forever Amber
. I felt so sorry for Amber. I wasn’t half way
through and already it was obvious Bruce would never love her back.

I checked my
watch. 11:02. I waited for the second hand to make its way around the clock
face. At 11:03 I dressed in an A-line skirt and a black silk blouse with pearl
buttons. I slipped on a pair of red pumps. I always wore high heels to work.

Between bites of
chocolate, I combed my gnarled hair and twisted it into a bun held in place
with rhinestone clips. I re-applied my lipstick. Before leaving the house, I
rolled a six on my lucky dice.

Some numbers
just aren’t that lucky.

* * *

The noon sun
glared down.

In the school
parking lot, I leaned out the window of my car. “Excuse me?” I waved to Miss
Hartly. “Would you mind parking further down?”

Miss Hartly, the
other
English teacher, held a box of Chinese take-out. She shut her car
door with her hip. “Yeah, I do mind.” She tossed her head and the perfect
strands of her blonde hair feathered back into place.

“I always park
there,” I said. It was my lucky space.

“Sorry, I’ve got
to get ready for my next class,” she bared her teeth in what could barely pass
for a smile.

“But you cut me
off,” I said.

She was already
wiggling away in her tight pantsuit. Tears stung my eyes. I got inappropriately
emotional sometimes.

I drove slowly
around the parking lot. I had to park next to a red mini-van, which I didn’t
like one bit. Who would drive a red mini-van? Someone who wished they drove a
Ferrari, that’s who.

After checking
my make-up in the rearview mirror and wiping off a smudge, I removed my black
driving gloves and put them away in the glove compartment where they belonged.
No one knew what a glove compartment was for anymore.

Pulling my
valise behind me, I went to the side entrance. I waited just outside and tapped
my foot six times.

“Ruby!” someone
called.

It was Mr.
Stroop, the headmaster. He jogged toward me, the coat of his jacket flapping.
His face was shiny, his breath labored. “And how is Ruby today?” He liked to
use the third person when speaking to me, as if I were a child.

“Ruby is
fine
,”
my voice was too loud.

He reached past
me, opening the door and scuffing my shoe. “Sorry,” he said. “After you.” He
waited, holding the door. There was a damp circle under his armpit. And simply
no way out. I held my breath to cross the threshold.

Without warning,
he lunged for the valise. “Oh, Mr. Stroop,” I cried, as he grabbed the handle,
damply squeezing my fingers. He lowered his head like a bull. “Give me…” His
face had gone florid.

“Please,” I held
on tight.

He let go and
produced a handkerchief. He dabbed it on his forehead.

“I’m so sorry,”
I said, but I wasn’t.

“I only wanted
to help,” he said.

“It’s alright.
Really, thank you, Mr. Stroop but I can manage perfectly by myself.”

“What do you
have in there? A dead body?”

I moved away. He
walked next to me.

There was a taut
quiet behind the classroom doors. When the bell rang, the halls would erupt
into chaos. My first class was a senior elective I called
How to get out of
Baby English 101
. The class had a wait list for the rest of the year.

I stopped in
front of the teacher’s lounge.

“Listen, Ruby,”
Mr. Stroop smoothed the fine hairs on his head. “I need to talk to you.”

“Why?”

“Nothing to
worry about, a new development,” his expression became coy. “I could tell you
about it. Over dinner.”

“No, thank you.”

He shifted
awkwardly. “Not a date.”

“Definitely not,”
I averted my gaze.

“But you have to
eat,” he insisted.

“No. I never eat
dinner. I don’t believe in it.” I slipped inside the lounge, closing the door
softly. I leaned against it.

Low voices
murmured in back, behind the partition. There was a giggle and another hushed
sound, like a secret operation underway. When I unzipped the pocket of my
valise, I cringed at the noise. But the muffled voices went on undisturbed.

Sitting in a
chair at the table, I opened a baggie and ate three apple slices spread with
almond butter. Another giggle slipped past the partition. “Why are we
whispering?” the female giggler was just loud enough to be intelligible now. “I
think we’re alone.”

Ugh, it was Miss
Hartly.

“Isn’t that a
song?” a man said.

My stomach
dropped.
Henry
. What was he doing behind the partition with Miss Hartly?

“Something weird
just happened out in the parking lot,” she was speaking louder all the time.

“Really?” Henry
said. “The parking lot?”

“So I’m driving
back from lunch, right? And I take the nearest parking space, like a normal
person. Guess who wants me to move my car?
After
I’ve already parked?”

“Stroop?”

“Not Stroop, you
idiot.” She giggled again. There was a long stifling moment. Were they
flirting? Kissing?

I held still. My
heart was pounding so loud, I was afraid they could hear it.

“Ruby Rain, as
in every day is Halloween.
That
Ruby. Somehow, she got it in her head I
took her space, like she has her name on it. Can you believe it?”

My face burned.

“Henry, she
wears gloves. For driving.”

Silence.

“Did you hear
me? I said she wears black driving gloves. Who is she supposed to be, Miss
Daisy?”

“But Miss Daisy
didn’t drive,” Henry said. “Wasn’t that the whole point of the movie?”

Miss Hartly’s
laugh careened across the partition, filling the room.

“She called me,”
Henry said. “Last night. Late.”

“You mean
Frankenstein’s bride herself?”

“Jesus, Georgie.
What’s your problem?”

“Why would
she
call
you
?”

“I ran into her
downtown,” he said. “A while back. We went out. Once. No big deal, but then she
started calling me. I think because…well, I never asked her out again.”

“Did you sleep
with her?”

“God no.”

I gripped the
edge of the table. Why did he say it like that?
God no
. With shaking
hands, I stuffed my lunch bag into the pocket of my valise. The zipper ripped
through the sudden quiet. There was a groan on the other side of the partition.
Henry peeped around. “Oh!
Ruby
…”

I was aware of
him coming toward me. I focused on the zipper.

“What’s going on
here?” he said. My plastic bag had caught and he disengaged it. “There,” he
winked, like he hadn’t just been making fun of me. “All better.”

I checked my
watch. “I have to go,” my voice quivered.

“I’ll walk with
you. I’m headed in the same direction.” Unbelievably, he grabbed my suitcase
and swung it like it weighed nothing.

“See you
tonight, Henry,” Miss Hartly called out.

If I’d found the
walk with Mr. Stroop agonizing, now I wanted to die. Had it really been so
stupid of me to call Henry? He promised to call, after cupping my face and
kissing me. It happened in the summer, weeks before school started.

I’d been minding
my own business in the record store. He came up and said, “What’s a kid like
you doing in a place like this? Do you have any idea what you’re holding in
your hands?” It was
Violent Femmes’ Add it Up
.

I should have
realized he was a phony, right then, but I only noticed his eyes were an exotic
color between green and blue and when he smiled, his teeth were perfect. I got
fluttery inside.

We went in and
out of the thrift stores, laughing and joking, holding hands on the sidewalk.
We missed the show at the theater, but that’s when he kissed me, as we stood
under the marquee with the sun setting behind us.

“Don’t pay any
attention to Georgie,” he said, finally, when we neared my classroom.

“Georgie?”

“You know,
Georgina? Miss Hartly?”

“Oh
her
.”

“Georgie and I
are just buddies.” He grinned with his movie star teeth.

Buddies?

“We hang out
sometimes,” he went on, as if I should care, which I did a tiny bit. “Georgie’s
cool. Don’t worry about her.” He set down my valise, just out of reach. “Let me
ask you, Ruby,” he said in a way that felt like I was in trouble. “How old are
you?”

What business
was it of his?

“We’ve all been
wondering. You seem too young to be a teacher,” he traced a finger lightly across
my cheek bone. “Did you skip grades in school?”

My mind reeled.
I could barely swallow.

“Seriously. How
old are you?”

“Why?” I
whispered.

“You’re legal,
right?” he chuckled and glanced around. The hall was empty.

“Let’s try this
again, Ruby.” And then he was pressing his lips to mine. His breath was sweet,
tinged with cinnamon.