Of Scars and Stardust Read online

  “Seriously, Rae? That doesn’t count.”

  Rae bit her lip and glanced back at the group of guys, who were in the middle of some kind of drinking game that involved coins and shot glasses. “Look, Claire, it’s your party, okay? I promise,” she said without looking back at me. “Now come meet Robbie, please?”

  But I still didn’t follow. Something thick and cold was stuck in my stomach, pressing me into the snow. “Where’s Grant?” I asked.

  Rae’s head snapped back and her eyes narrowed into hard slits. But before I could think about it, they had melted back to watery green and she was wrapping me in a hug. “Oh Claire, I’m so sorry. Grant couldn’t make it. He said it was too cold.” She pulled away and kissed my cheek. “Said it would bother his asthma.”

  The cold in my stomach sloshed violently and I wobbled backward, just for a second. Rae was still watching me, her mouth pressed in a thin line. Then she grabbed my hand and pulled. “Come on. Let’s meet Robbie.” But this time her words came out sharper than they had before. This time, I let her take me with her.

  She pulled me toward the group of guys, who’d started pelting their coins at a straggling raccoon instead of their shot glasses. A guy with a nose too big for his face laughed hysterically as the raccoon hissed and rocketed into the stalks.

  “Hey Robbie,” Rae chirped just as the guys remembered their liquor on the table. “I want you to meet Claire.” She patted me on the head like I was her well-loved rag doll.

  A guy turned toward me, his hair matted to his head by what looked like a week’s worth of grease and cheap hair gel. He grinned, and only half of his mouth hitched in the corner. “Hey Claire. Nice to finally meet you.”

  I tried not to scrunch my nose when he spoke, but the combination of some kind of sharp liquor and menthol cigarettes on his breath almost made me gag. I pressed my lips into a tight smile and said, “Nice to meet you.”

  Robbie grabbed Rae and wrapped his arm around her shoulder so that his hand dangled dangerously close to her chest, and then he kissed the side of her neck. She giggled and whined, pretending she didn’t like it, before Robbie turned to me again. “Hey, thanks for letting Rae throw you this party. She just wasn’t happy leaving without doing something for your birthday first.” His face curved into a half-smile again, and I wondered if the other side of his face just didn’t work.

  Something itched at the back of my brain just then, a thought that I couldn’t quite reach. It was uncomfortable, prickly, and I knew I wouldn’t feel good when I eventually found it.

  “Hey, you want a drink?” Rae blurted, pointing to the cherry vodka still in my hand. “Take a birthday swig, for me?”

  I watched Robbie watching me as I tipped the bottle to my mouth and sipped. It burned down my throat, hot and spicy like a cherry cough drop. But instead of it filling me with heat, I just felt cold instead.

  “How’d you even get out of the house tonight, with your mom having you on lockdown?” I asked Rae as I handed her the bottle.

  Rae rolled her eyes and huffed dramatically. “Please. My mom’s version of ‘lockdown’ is taking my suitcase.” She laughed, and Robbie chimed in like this was somehow hilarious to him, too: “But that’s why they make garbage bags, right, babe? To put stuff in.” Rae stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, and Robbie grabbed the back of her neck and smashed his mouth to hers.

  I grabbed the vodka bottle back out of Rae’s hand and pressed the rim to my mouth. Rae and Robbie’s faces looked like an abstract painting, all patches of skin and splatters of hair twisted up in each other through the glass. I took a step toward the edge of the clearing, the bottle still lingering on my lips.

  Dad once told me and Ella that Amble had the densest cornfields in all of Ohio. He said they were so thick that you could get swallowed up inside them, even in the dead of winter. As I looked out over the tops of the sallow stalks, gasping for life in the bitter night, I felt it: the tingling sensation of being watched.

  Hunted.

  I took another swig and another step, waiting. If all the stories Rae had ever told us about the wolves were true—that they could smell cherry lip balm from over a mile away, or that periwinkle was their favorite color—then they would come. If they were real, they would come now.

  My face was red, I could feel it, and the vodka sloshed in my stomach as I pulled Ella’s knitted bird with the beaded eye from my pocket. I held the delicate yarn in my palm like a peace offering. And then I tipped the bottle so that the last of the vodka dripped into the snow.

  “Hey! Why’re you throwing good liquor away?” someone yelled from behind me. I didn’t even turn around; I just kept pouring, watching while the puddles in the snow started to form patterns.

  “Hey,” the voice said again, from over my shoulder. He clamped his hand around my wrist and ripped the bottle from my hand. “If you want to make puddles, I can piss in the snow for you.”

  I snapped my head back to look at him. He towered over me, the shoulder of his flannel jacket just grazing the top of my head. And as with almost everyone else here, I had no idea who he was.

  He looked down at me through bloodshot eyes and the smirk slowly dripped from his face. “Dude. You’re the chief’s kid, aren’t you? Mike Graham’s daughter?” He raised his palms. “Hey. This is, like, the only time I’ve drank. Ever.”

  “I don’t care,” I said, rolling my eyes. I wiggled the empty vodka bottle for good measure.

  The guy’s whole body relaxed and he pulled a beat-up flask from his pocket. “Whew. So now that I know you’re cool, there’s something I’ve always wanted to know.” He took a swig from his flask and coughed. “Does your dad tell you the inside scoop on big cases? Do you get to know all the good stuff the Observer doesn’t report?”

  I snorted. “I think you’re forgetting where we live. There aren’t any big cases in the-middle-of-nowhere, Ohio.”

  “Nah, not true. Sarah Dunnard. That’s been a pretty big deal.” He glanced down at me. “You know anything about that one?”

  I shrugged. The truth was, everyone in Amble was whispering about Sarah Dunnard’s disappearance, but Dad hadn’t said anything at all—even though he’d been the one to find the speckles of her blood crawling up the cornstalks. In fact, since he’d been on the case, he’d been acting kind of strange. He’d started spending all his evenings pacing by the kitchen windows and glancing out into our backyard. And one time, I even caught him endlessly stirring his coffee while staring at the kitchen wallpaper, lost in thought. What he was thinking about, I had no idea. He wouldn’t let any of us know.

  “They haven’t found her yet,” I said. “That’s all I know.”

  He winced like I’d slapped him with my words. “Probably won’t ever,” he said. His eyes scanned the stalks that stretched out before us.

  “Do you think there’s wolves out there?” I asked, nodding toward the stalks. “In there.”

  The guy continued to stare into the cornfield, his eyes narrowed, like if he squinted hard enough he’d find a wolf waving back at him. He scratched the scruff on his chin that was trying desperately to turn into a beard, and said, “Nah.”

  I nodded and tipped my chin to look up at him. His face was drenched in light, like tiny fireflies were stuck in the folds of his almost-beard. And the specks of light in the sky wobbled around him, dancing to the beat of the pounding in my head. I stumbled backward, but he snatched my sleeve before I fell.

  “Whoa there. It looks like you’ve had enough of the ol’ bottle tonight.” He laughed and patted me hard on the shoulder. I sighed, staring at the watery snow beneath my boots. All of a sudden his finger was under my chin and I think he was saying something like, “Why so glum, chum?”

  I closed my eyes when I lifted my face up, so that the stars wouldn’t wobble behind his head this time. And in that instant, a shock ran through my brain and slammed the itchy thoughts
back into focus and set them on fire. And suddenly I knew. My eyes popped open.

  “My best friend needed a holiday to run away on. And she didn’t want to wait until Christmas.” I took a step away from him so his sweaty finger wasn’t under my chin anymore. “She needed my birthday. So she made me a party … for her.”

  “That’s not so bad,” almost-bearded guy said, taking a swig from his flask. “At least she threw you a party.”

  I squinted into the cornfield, chewing the skin off my lips. For a second I thought I heard my name in the wind, or maybe it was just the thought of my name. “She said that the wolves are out here, watching us. That they like cherry-flavored things and the color periwinkle. But that’s a lie. Everything is a lie.” I shoved Ella’s bird toward him. “This is periwinkle. And that’s cherry.” I pointed to the bottle. “There aren’t any wolves.”

  He just shrugged and took another swig. He must have gotten annoyed by me, or figured that I wasn’t going to make out with him no matter how drunk I was, because he started scratching his beard like he was thinking again. And then he just walked away, swinging his flask at his side.

  I started to turn back toward the fire when I heard the whisper in the wind again: Claire.

  Claire.

  Claire.

  A tiny piece of my heart begged for it to be Grant. I turned slowly toward the shivering stalks and waited, hoped.

  Claire.

  From the darkness, the brittle leaves cracked and groaned. And a short little body, dressed in a puffy ski coat and a wool hat with ears, stepped into the clearing.

  Ella had arrived, just like she’d always planned.

  four

  “Hi Claire,” Ella said as she stepped through the stalks. She pulled a jagged corn leaf from her hair. “Ouch! That one was pokey.”

  I could feel my mouth moving and words jumbling around in my head, lots of words that I wanted to say, but nothing came out. Instead my mouth hung open like a hooked fish as Ella cocked her head to the side and said, “What?”

  Somewhere in the back of my throat, the words tickled and burned until they bubbled onto my tongue: “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Just then, almost-bearded guy appeared next to us. He blinked at me, and then at Ella, the skin between his eyebrows wrinkling. “Hey. Hey, why’re there two of you?” He wobbled a little, his arms pinwheeling wildly before he centered himself next to a stalk.

  Ella trudged up to him until her eyes were level with his chest. She threw her head up to look at him, and when she did, the little knitted ears on her hat wiggled. She scrunched her nose and stared at him, then said, “Ew, Claire,” as if his presence was somehow my fault.

  I grabbed her arm and pulled her away from him, from the edge of the cornfield, toward the fire. And then I shoved her, just enough so that her eyes grew wide and she had to take a step back.

  “Why are you here?” I yelled, even though I didn’t mean to.

  Now Ella’s mouth hung open, and her arms went limp at her side. Finally, she swung a mittened hand up and I imagined she was pointing at me beneath the orange yarn. The corners of her mouth twitched into a smile. “You brought my bird.”

  I glanced down at my fists. I’d almost forgotten; Ella’s periwinkle bird that I’d been using as wolf bait was still smashed into my fist.

  Something about the way her eyes lit up when she saw her present in my hand—her innocent bird trapped between my fingers while the world spun around us and the stars bounced on their strings—made me want to punch her and hug her at the same time.

  I walked closer to her and she winced. “I’m not going to hit you, Ell,” I said, grabbing her mitten. I pressed the little bird into her palm. “Go home. Take this home so I don’t do something stupid like lose it.” I glanced around at what was left of the party and cringed. “You’ve gotta go.”

  Ella blinked at me and held the bird in her palm, like it was a fragile thing that would crack if she moved too fast. The blood rushed through my ears as I watched her, all mittens and blond hair and pink cheeks. And I realized that I’d never experienced a moment with my sister when she didn’t have anything to say. Until this one.

  “Ella?” Rae bounded up behind me and stumbled into Ella so hard that for a second, I thought they were both going to tumble into the fire. The silence between us cracked, and Ella was giggling and squealing as she tried to escape from Rae’s death grip. Finally, Ella ducked Rae’s swinging arms and pulled free.

  “Glad you could make it!” Rae screamed, her voice bouncing around the clearing. Before I could open my mouth, she’d wrapped her pink hands around Ella’s arm and pulled her away from the fire. Away from me. It only took a second for Ella’s knit hat to melt into the chaos of slurred words and clinking bottles.

  A heavy hand clamped on my shoulder. “That your sister?” almost-bearded guy asked. I’d forgotten he was still here.

  I shrugged my shoulders, trying to squirm free of his sweaty skin. “Yeah.” Obviously.

  He hesitated, just for a second, but it was long enough for me to know that I wouldn’t like whatever was about to come out of his booze-soaked mouth. He tipped his head to the side and squinted through the bonfire smoke. “How old’s she?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “She’s pretty hot, that’s all,” he said, taking a quick step to the left.

  But I didn’t smack him, or even yell. Instead I lifted an eyebrow at him and said, “Yeah, she will be. Maybe even by the time she turns thirteen, you creep.”

  I left him there, mouth hanging open and eyes polluted with fear. We were, after all, the police chief’s daughters. I stomped through the cold, the sea of drunk bodies parting with the heat of my anger.

  I peered through the fire and found Ella, her infectious giggle carrying through the clearing. She smashed her mittens to her mouth to stifle her laughter as a boy I didn’t know leaned over and whispered in her ear.

  He was taller but maybe not much older, with a smile that crinkled in the corners and a nose that bent in all the wrong places. A mess of dishwater hair hung over his eyes. His name wafted in front of me like the specks of debris from the fire, but I couldn’t quite catch it with my vodka-laced tongue. All I knew is that I’d see him before, probably around school.

  Ella’s eyes grew wide as the boy’s lips moved in hushed words, close to her cheek. She dropped her mittens and whispered something back, but the smile had melted from her lips. She didn’t look flattered or flushed or even mildly curious.

  She was intrigued.

  “Ella!” I yelled as I made my way to her. She jolted, and so did the boy beside her, two pairs of eyes round and petrified. I hooked my arm in hers. “It’s late. You shouldn’t

  be here.”

  “She can stay,” Rae called from behind the mostly empty tub of glass bottles.

  “She was just leaving,” I snapped. “She’s a little too young for this party, don’t you think?” My eyes caught Rae’s and the smile sagged from her face. I think even in the haze of cherry vodka and cigarette smoke, we both knew I was challenging her to tell me otherwise.

  I pulled my lip between my teeth and waited. Waited for Rae to laugh and dance around my words and tell me that I was being too overprotective, too uptight. Waited for the icy feeling in my stomach to melt away, the one that said Rae hadn’t tried hard enough to get Grant to come, for the two of us to burst out laughing about the whole thing.

  But Rae’s eyes just narrowed; she watched me like I was some kind of exotic zoo animal that she’d never encountered before. I sucked in a breath and waited.

  “You know, it’s, what—almost one? The wolves come out to hunt between one and three.” Rae took a step forward and crossed her arms over her chest. “You sure you want her to go back?”

  Ella’s eyes were so big, and her lips were pressed togethe
r so tight, that she looked like one of those bug-eyed goldfish you see in tanks at Chinese restaurants. I chewed on my lip, thinking. I could always go back with her. But the stars were still orbiting the sky, and with the way the cornfield slanted to the left even when I was standing straight, I knew I needed

  to stay long enough to even be able to find my way back.

  And then there was the small spark of hope still flickering inside of me. Maybe it wasn’t his asthma—maybe Grant had fallen asleep and Rae didn’t wake him up, and he was running around trying to find socks without holes as we spoke. Maybe he was running through the stalks right now, hoping I was still waiting for him.

  I grabbed Ella’s shoulder and squeezed. “There aren’t any wolves in the cornfield, Rae. You’re just making it up.” I let out a puff of air and gasped at myself in disbelief. I tried to cover up my surprise at my own words by sucking in another quick breath, and then I said, “I poured cherry vodka by the edge of the clearing and I didn’t even hear the leaves move in the field. No wolves are coming.” I left out the part about offering up Ella’s knitted bird as bait.

  Rae scoffed and rolled her eyes. “You think they’re going to come right up to a clearing? Get real, Claire.” She leaned forward so that her cheeks brushed between mine and Ella’s jackets and whispered, “They’re gonna get you in the field.”

  “I don’t want to go back by myself,” Ella said as she pressed a mitten against her mouth. “I can’t go back by my-

  self.”

  “Stop, Rae!” I yelled, wrapping my arm around Ella. “You’re scaring her.”

  But Rae just tipped her head back and laughed. Just then, something that sounded like a warbled howl pierced through the field, at least a hundred yards away.

  Ella’s body went rigid next to me the same time that Rae’s mouth twisted into a satisfied smirk. “See? They’re waiting for a late-night, Ella-sized snack.” She bent her bony fingers into claws and growled for extra emphasis.