She Dims the Stars (11 page)

It’s moments like these that remind me that no matter how hard I try or how many things I do, my life will never be easy or what other people consider conventional. I may fight this thing until the day I die.
But at least I’ll fight it.

The thing that’s beginning to worry me is that my mother’s journals show no sign of this being hereditary.

Nagging thoughts of this plague me as I shuffle back to where the boys are still sleeping in the sand. Cline’s snoring is so loud I’m afraid he could set off a car alarm. But Elliot is resting on his side, his arm outstretched toward my pillow like he’s been searching for me in his sleep. My chest aches at the sight, so I look away, reminding myself that we’re all here as friends, on a mission to find answers for the sole reason of getting info on me for Elliot’s game. And along the way, I will find the courage to talk to Cline. Then I can go about my life, and Dr. Stark can get off my back about this little Eight Steps to Happiness bullshit she’s been pushing at me for the last year.

Elliot stirs and his eyes blink open once, then twice, before he sits up and holds a hand to his forehead to shield his face from the sunrise. “Hey.”

“Can I have your keys?” I reach out my hand like I’ve casually been waiting for him to wake up.

He digs in his pocket and holds them out to me, and I take them quickly. “You might want to wake up The Beast over there. I’m sure they’ll start patrolling once the sun is up. We should get outta here.” I give a quick nod and rush as fast as I can through the sand toward his car. Given the short amount of time I have, I open the passenger door and struggle to pull my purse from beneath the seat where I had it stashed away just in case anyone looked inside the windows overnight.

With shaking fingers, I locate the flower-printed bag and pull out my array of bottles. With precision I’ve perfected over the years, I take the tops off of them one at a time and replace them quickly before moving onto the next. Five bottles in all in the morning. The pills are all lined up along the car seat as I step around the back to grab a water bottle from the trunk, and when I turn to walk back to where the passenger door is open, Elliot is standing there, staring at my line of prescriptions.

His eyes hold no judgment as they meet mine. “How many of those do you take?”

I push down the fear of what he could possibly be thinking about me as I move to stand by him and then angle myself in front to scoop the pills into my hand. They all go into my mouth at once, and I have them swallowed with one gulp of water from the bottle. Facing him, I give the best smile I can manage. “Not enough to get full. We should get breakfast. Is Cline up?”

“I got a campsite for us at Devil’s Fork, but we have to stay for a minimum of two nights. I told them two was fine.” Elliot pockets his phone as he gets back into the car. The rest stop isn’t packed, but there are enough people around that sitting in the car has kept me entertained while the boys have been doing their business.

“I’ll pay you back for the campsite,” I say, and I mean it. I’ve never expected anything from anyone.

Elliot smiles and starts the car, the beauty mark next to his ear raising a little in the process. “Just fill up the next tank and we’ll be even.”

Cline rushes across the parking lot, still zipping his pants, practically tripping over himself before he launches his large body into the car. “I got tapped.”

“What?” I turn in my seat to look at his face and he’s gone almost completely white, sweat beads trickling from beneath his stupid hat.

“I was taking a shit and the guy next to me tapped my foot. He TAPPED MY FOOT.”

“Maybe he just had a wide spread,” Elliot offers as he begins to reverse out of the parking lot.

“Maybe there was a glory hole in the wall that I was unaware of. Don’t act like you don’t know about
the tap
at rest stops.” He slides sideways and rests his head on the pillow he has in the backseat, tipping his hat forward in the process. He’s breathing heavy, and his cheeks are bright red, but after about a full minute of silence he shrugs and pulls out his phone. “I don’t really blame him, though. I mean … look at me. I’m ridiculously good looking.”

I start to say something, but Elliot’s hand on my knee stops me. He has a wry grin on his face and closes his eyes for a second while he shakes his head like I should just leave it. So I do. Because I trust this boy and I have no idea why.

Devil’s Fork is, in a word, gorgeous. The campsite is small and on the water, close enough to the bathrooms that I could find them without a flashlight, but far enough away that I don’t smell them being downwind. Lake Jacosse spreads out before us, peaceful and astoundingly clear. I’m on the edge of the water, taking in how different this is from the ocean we were just staring at around six hours ago. The boys are setting up the eight man tent directly behind me, and there’s another small popup tent to my left that looks empty at the moment, leaving my mind to wonder about its inhabitants.

“Where is this rock that your mom jumped off of?” Cline calls from his lazy stance, holding one of the rods while Elliot threads it through the loops at the base of the tent.

I shrug and point off into the distance. “We need a way to get over there to the waterfall.” Wendy’s diary says that she snuck into the park after hours and found a group of people her age sitting around drinking and just asked if she could stay with them. They were the ones with the boat. Her entire rebellion hinged on the fact that people weren’t going to
murder
her.

My once-best-friend comes to stand next to me and crosses his arm, his large frame blocking out the sunlight coming through the trees. “Do we have a boat?”

“No.”

“Were you planning on getting a boat?”

“There are ways.”

He nods in my periphery and sighs like he’s about to say something really shitty when the water at our feet begins to ripple and wave, coming in at rougher intervals, and then we hear the sound of a boat drop into a lower gear. I think we both see her at the same time. She’s golden-tan, raven haired, and wearing one of the smallest pink bikinis I’ve seen in a really long time. That’s saying something, because my bedroom has a view of one of the student apartment pools off campus.

The wind is making her hair fly everywhere, and she lifts her sunglasses to the top of her head to secure her tresses like a headband then offers a friendly smile and wave as she continues on to the dock to our left.

Cline is speechless as I look up at his face, suppressing the urge to reach over and close his mouth for him.

“Did your entire life just flash before your eyes? Wedding, babies, white picket fence?” I ask and hold back a smile as he blinks his way back into reality.

“What? No. It was more like topless, in a tent, on her back.”

“You’re disgusting.”

His eyes meet mine and he holds my gaze as he speaks the next words so that they’ll hit me straight in the gut. “Every guy does it. Ask Elliot how many times he’s closed his eyes and pictured you naked recently.”

I turn and walk away before he says anything else, my throat suddenly tight and stomach twisted with worry. It’s possible he’s right, but it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

The bathroom looms before me, and I hurry inside like it’s my only safe place, some sort of dirty salvation in the woods where I can have some peace and quiet. But I know better, because no matter how far I run, I can never outrun myself. I have the loudest voice I know, even when I’m completely silent.

The ocean’s salt is still sticking to me, and there’s sand in between my toes when I walk into one of the stalls. I stand there for a minute, trying to breathe through my nose and form a plan on how we’ll get out to the rocks so that I can jump like Wendy had. So I can feel the exhilaration of the drop into the water. She talked about the freedom of the fall, and even though I’m terrified of heights, I would do this in her honor. Just to feel a flicker of what she might have experienced.

There’s a creak and then the sound of the main door being slammed shut. A shuffling of feet through the water on the floor alerts me to someone else in the bathroom, and just when I start to hold my breath and my heartbeat gets louder in my ears, I hear the click clack of flip flops on the floor, and I know it’s not one of the guys coming to find me. It’s another camper.

Of course it is.

I exhale and turn around, lifting my foot to flush the toilet so I don’t seem like some kind of weirdo, and let the commode noise die down before I reach for the door handle. There’s a huge colorful butterfly sculpture attached to the yellowed tile up by the screened windows, and I pause for a moment, wondering who would put that much effort into decorating a restroom before the sound of the other person washing their hands brings me back to reality.

Gaining my composure, I step out and head toward the sinks when I notice that the other occupant of the bathroom is the girl from the boat. She’s got a towel wrapped around her chest, her hair thrown into a ponytail, and her sunglasses perched on top of her head again. She smiles at me from the mirror’s reflection.

“Hi.”

“Hey,” I say and turn the water on to wash nothing from my hands. When I’m done, I reach for a paper towel, but she hands me one instead.

“September.”

“What?” I ask, leaning back to look her over. Her cheeks are sunburnt, and her bright green eyes are a little red so I’m wondering if she’s high or if it’s the lake water.

“I’m September. What’s your name?” She extends a slender hand my way, and I blush as I realize that she’s just being nice and that this is probably how my mom did shit back in the day. Just talked to people. It takes a few drinks for me to get this friendly. This girl is offering up her hand like she’s ready to be best friends.

“Audrey. I saw you come by on your boat.”

She grins. “It’s a rental. I’ve only got it for another day. Are you in the lot next to the little red tent?”

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“We’re neighbors for a couple more nights.” She turns to her reflection in the mirror again and presses the pink spots beneath her eyes. “These are gonna hurt like a bitch once the sun goes down. I probably won’t get any sleep at all.”

“One of the guys I’m with snores like an eighty-year-old man who forgot to plug in his CPAP machine, so you probably won’t get any sleep anyway. My apologies in advance.”

Her laugh is loud and genuine, and her smile reflects in her eyes. But the sound also bounces all along the walls, across the tile, and with it comes the sound of fluttering.

“What the hell?” Her eyebrows draw together as she looks around. “Did you hear that?”

“Maybe it’s a bird in the rafters?” I strain to look up into the darkened ceiling.

“No. That wasn’t a bird.” She steps forward and pushes open one of the stalls and we both peek in to see if there’s anything there.

“That’s weird,” I say as the door slams shut, rattling the other stalls.

She turns to me with wide eyes. “What’s weird?”

“There wasn’t a butterfly statue in that one.”

“What. The. Fuck …”

The reverberation of the doors reaches the last stall where I was standing and we hear the sound again, this time more urgent than before, and faster than a scream can leave my mouth, that thing that was in the stall with me rises and takes flight right above our heads.

“That’s a fucking moth, Audrey!” September is screaming and it’s making the thing go crazy. It’s three feet tall, I swear, and it has no sense of personal space, because it’s flying at us intermittently as we are screaming and covering our heads.

“I thought it was art!” I’m ducking and weaving, trying to make it to the door and she’s right behind me, slipping through old water, and Mothra is getting more agitated by the second. I reach the door, throw it open, and we both run screaming out into the open air, crouched low as the beast with wings follows us out and pivots up and over the bathhouse.

Cline and Elliot are running full speed toward us, and I’ve never been so happy to see someone before in my entire life. Elliot has his arms out and I grab him hard, practically jumping into his arms and wrap myself like a sloth around his body.