Of Scars and Stardust Read online

  “They’re not real, right, Claire?” Ella’s lip quivered as she tilted her head into my jacket.

  Even though I was still buzzed, I still knew it was stupid, the whole thing. Rae would be gone in less than twelve hours, her Cosmopolitan magazines and striped socks all smashed together in a garbage bag in the back of Robbie’s car. And I should just let her have her stories about the wolves, because I think a part of her truly believed them. But even though she’d be long gone in a few hours, the way her nonsense stories made Ella’s breath quicken with panic and her eyes grow wide—well, that wouldn’t go away, no matter how far Rae got from Amble.

  I stepped between Rae and Ella and pressed Ella’s cheeks between my mittens. “Trust me. You got here okay, didn’t you? I need you to go home.” I kissed the tip of her nose. “What do I always promise you?”

  She blinked up at me. “That you’ll keep me safe, forever and ever.”

  “Right,” I said, smiling. “I’ll be home in a little bit.”

  Ella’s shoulders softened and she nodded. “Okay. Okay, okay.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I’m gonna go home. But I’m not going to bed until you get back,” she said, jabbing me.

  I walked her toward the edge of the clearing, not even turning to face Rae. “Okay, Ell, whatever you want.”

  “And I’m gonna go through your jewelry while you’re gone. And maybe your makeup.” She tapped a mitten to her mouth. “Yeah, definitely your makeup.”

  “I guess that gives me a good reason to get back as soon as I can then, huh?” We were at the edge of the clearing now, stepping over the puddles of vodka I’d left in the snow. Ella nodded and smiled, but her lips were tight and her eyes were big and watery. She blinked quickly and said, “See ya later, gator.” And then she was gone.

  As I listened to her boots tromp through the stalks, the stars seemed to shudder to a stop on their invisible strings. And I wondered if maybe the stars and the earth weren’t moving not because of the vodka in my veins, but because Ella had left, and there was no magic to orbit around anymore. I watched her bob through the cornfield for as long as I could see her, and after that I listened. But all I could hear was the sharp bite of the wind and the promise of a howl in the distance.

  five

  It wasn’t until the sky had turned gray, and the clouds’ bellies glowed pink, that I realized my jewelry box was still closed. I gasped, pushing aside my covers as I threw myself out of bed.

  Outside my window, winged things buzzed and chirped. Morning sounds.

  I stepped onto the cold floor and pulled open the drawers. Necklaces and faded silver rings, still there.

  I swallowed the sick feeling curdling in my throat and pulled open my makeup drawer. Eyeliners and lip glosses and nail polish, all carefully placed in their baskets.

  My hands reached for the edge of my dresser, still shaking. I closed my eyes. “Think, Claire. Think,” I whispered to my haggard reflection in the mirror.

  I’d looked for Ella on the way home—I remembered that. There were no broken stalks or sunken snowdrifts that would mean something had happened.

  But there were no footprints leading to our doorstep that told me something hadn’t, either.

  I headed toward Ella’s room. My brain pounded she’s fine, she’s fine, she’s fine to the rhythm of my heartbeat.

  Christmas music floated from the radio in the kitchen and something sizzled in a pan. Mom was humming to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” I sucked in a breath as I tiptoed toward Ella’s closed bedroom door. And then I heard it: the shuffle of a paper, probably the sports section, and a low grumble.

  I stopped, listening for the paper to stop rustling, for Dad’s police chief radar to make his ears prick and his nose sniff for anything amiss. I half-expected him to come running up the stairs, his nose in the air like a hound dog. But instead I heard him say, “Hey Rosie, can you get me a cup of coffee?” and cough.

  My hand slid around Ella’s doorknob, slick with sweat. I wiped my palm against the jeans I’d been wearing since last night, and twisted.

  The sun peeked through her mismatched curtains, and the stars and lightning bolts swayed on their strings above her bed. A pile of sweaters, a basket of headbands, and a worn purple diary sat on Ella’s bed.

  “Ella?” I whispered. She could still be under there, tucked in with sweaters, fast asleep. Safe. “Ell, you in here?” I pushed off the piles of clothes. An empty rainbow afghan sat in a ball on her bed.

  Panicked, I grabbed the diary. Maybe she’d written something, left me a note to tell me where she’d gone. I ran my fingers over the canvas cover and flipped through the pages. All empty, every one of them, except for a few sporadic pencil drawings of lumpy unicorns and hearts dotted with initials I didn’t recognize. Of course there would be no entries or notes in here—all of Ella’s words came straight from her lips, not from a pencil.

  I pressed my hand to my chest to keep my heart from leaping out of it. There were no boots. No puffy ski jacket. No knitted hat with ears thrown on the floor.

  No Ella.

  I stepped out into the hall and pressed my forehead against the frame. Okay, so she wasn’t in her room. She could have hung her coat in the closet. Her boots could be by the front door. She could be wearing her knitted hat with the ears right this second in the kitchen while she picked through the marshmallows in her Lucky Charms.

  But she wasn’t. I knew she wasn’t. Somehow I just knew that Ella wasn’t in this house—the sun didn’t shine as brightly through the windows and everything seemed dimmer.

  So where was she?

  “Do you think I should wake the girls?” Mom’s voice came from the kitchen. “It’s almost nine, and we still haven’t given Claire her birthday presents.” There was the clinking sound of silverware and a heavy sigh. “I feel terrible, delaying Claire’s birthday over Rae. And I don’t think we did much to calm Laura down anyway.”

  I didn’t hear Dad’s response over the gurgling coffee pot. I was already thumping down the stairs, smacking my bare feet against the wood so they knew I was coming.

  “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” wafted from the radio as I walked into the kitchen, and instantly I flashed back to the church pageant a few years ago. Ella had played the angel Gabriel, and she’d insisted on making her own wings, complete with orange feathers. In my mind, I saw her giggling as she knocked baby Jesus out of the manger for the third time with a flick of her outrageous wings.

  “Oh, you’re up.” Mom smiled and prodded the bacon to leave the pan. She didn’t know; she couldn’t.

  “Yeah, I was just about to go into town.” I smiled widely. “I have to get some Christmas presents still. Be back later.” I turned to leave, still smiling tightly even though she couldn’t see my face anymore.

  The paper shifted and I just knew he wasn’t going to make it any easier today. “Wait a second, Claire.” I felt Dad’s eyes on the back of my head. “We didn’t get to celebrate your birthday yesterday, so we’re going to do it this morning. Go wake your sister up.”

  I whipped around. “Dad, I have to—”

  “No, you don’t.” He neatly folded the paper into halves, not bothering to look at me. “Not right now, anyway. Go wake your sister up.”

  I sucked in my lip. I knew I could find her if I had the chance. I’d check the cornfield first, just to rule it out, but I knew she wouldn’t still be in there. She’d be in town, at the bead store, spending her allowance on glass beads with little flowers in them to make last-minute Christmas presents for her friends. I just knew it.

  “Okay,” I said, and I started slowly back up the stairs. I needed time to think. How could I explain that Ella was mysteriously missing and that if they just gave me an hour, I’d bring her back home?

  The phone rang in the kitchen. Mom’s slippers padded across the floor. “Hello?” Silence, except for the last
notes of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” And then, “Oh God, oh God. Okay Laura, let me put Mike on the phone.”

  The lights flickered around me, and little black stars popped in front of my eyes, and I was going to pass out, I was so going to pass out. They’d found Ella—someone found Ella out in the cornfield. Not in the bead shop downtown.

  I grabbed the banister and squeezed.

  The stool groaned as Dad got up to grab the phone. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  I heard Mom untangle her fingers from the phone cord. She whispered, “Rae’s gone. Laura went to check her room this morning and she wasn’t there. Took most of her stuff this time.”

  I quietly lowered myself to my knees and pressed my head against the floor. Dad was talking to Rae’s mom now, asking her questions about the last time she’d seen Rae and all the other things that police have to ask. My heart lowered from my throat to my chest and for the first time since I’d checked my jewelry box, I felt like I could almost breath.

  “I have to go,” Dad said, and I heard him shifting through the junk drawer for his keys. “We can’t officially do something until she’s gone for twenty-four hours, but I told Laura I’d check out her room, see if we could get an idea.”

  Mom sighed and said, “Well, if you’re going over there, I am too. Laura and Grant are going to need somebody.” She clicked off the radio. “Poor Laura. Rae doesn’t realize what she’s doing to her.”

  I pulled myself from floor and slid into the bathroom just before they walked by. “Claire, we have to run to the Buchanans’. So sorry, sweetheart.”

  I let out a short breath. “I’m in the bathroom, Mom.”

  “Okay. We’ll be back. Watch Ella, please.” The closet door opened and closed, and then the front door opened and closed, and they were gone. And then I could breath.

  I shoved my boots onto my bare feet, wrapped one of Ella’s polka-dotted scarves around my neck, and flew out the door. Seconds later I was on my bike, tires slipping on the ice, just a couple miles of frozen corn between me and Ella.

  By the time I rode by Rae’s house, I was positive that Ella couldn’t be at the bead shop downtown. I’d remembered that she’d spent her allowance when we were in town three days ago, on some periwinkle yarn and new knitting needles. The same yarn that she’d made my bird bookmark from.

  And then there was the bird bookmark. I’d given it to her last night to take home, to keep safe. I knew she’d never lose it, because it wasn’t hers to lose. She didn’t lose things that were important to other people, especially me.

  It was nowhere in the house.

  Which meant that Ella had never come home.

  Somehow, I wasn’t completely panicked yet. Because to me, Ella was magic, bright and bubbly magic, and that kind of magic just didn’t get taken away. It just didn’t.

  As I came up to Rae’s house, I saw Dad’s clunky police car tucked into the driveway. Grant’s silver bike was sprawled across the front porch. I let my feet hang off the pedals and the bike slide to a stop, just out of sight of the front window.

  I could tell them.

  I could tell them that Rae had left with some guy named Robbie who had a half-moon smile and heavy-lidded eyes. And that she’d packed all of her things in garbage bags and was probably somewhere out of Ohio by now.

  I could tell them that Ella was with me at the party last night, even though I’d told her not to come. And that now she was missing.

  No. She wasn’t missing.

  I would find her. She’d be sitting in the field, knitting flowered hats or trying to decide if she should take home the half-frozen raccoon she’d found in between the stalks and feed it chicken soup. I’d take her home, and make her drink the cheap cough syrup that Mom always gave us, and put her to bed. And I’d make her leave the raccoon.

  I would find her, and everything would be okay.

  My stomach hitched as I caught a glimpse of Grant in the window. His hair was poking up all over his head, and his cheeks looked raw and windswept. I couldn’t see his freckles from here, but I knew they were tumbling across his nose as he rubbed it.

  A part of me almost threw down my bike and stomped up the steps and asked him why he’d given me that note if he wasn’t planning on coming to my party anyway, and didn’t he know that was really rude? But I didn’t have time for that. I’d deal with that later.

  I dipped my head below the stalks as I rode past the front window. No one turned, no one noticed. I stood on the pedals and pumped through the snow, the wind whipping through Ella’s scarf around my neck.

  I rode for another mile, watching the cornstalks for any sign of life. When I got closer to the clearing, my heart started to pound again and my hands grew slick with sweat.

  I almost rode past the spot, but it was the scent that made me brake so hard that my bike wobbled and slid on its side into the snowdrift. I stood and sucked in the air through my nose.

  Cherry Blast body spray.

  My heart roared in my ears like a wild, out-of-control ocean. I brushed the snow off my jeans and took three steps into the field.

  She lay in a ring of snow, her arms stretched out at her sides. Her eyes were open, gray and dull and mirroring the grumbling clouds above us. Blood, so much blood, sliced across her mouth in angry lines and splattered across her puffy white ski jacket. Shaking, I reached down and opened her little mittened fist. My periwinkle bird stared up at me with an accusing beaded eye.

  Your mind does funny things when it goes into shock. I didn’t scream, or yell, or even cry.

  I started singing.

  The words to “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” flooded my brain, and I sang them to her.

  Because right then, she looked like an angel with orange-tipped wings, dancing in the church Christmas play.

  A beautiful, bloody snow angel looking toward the sky.

  part two

  six

  “I need a light.” I slid a cigarette from Danny’s box and trapped it between my fingers. He tugged a box of matches from his coat pocket and tossed it to me. I lit a match and puffed. “You know, it’s a lot easier to just carry a lighter.”

  A second match snapped as it flickered to life. He stared at the flame while it licked at his fingertips. “But matches are more fun.”

  I nodded. “True.” Smoke mingled with the cold as it curled from my lips. The bell rang behind us.

  Danny raised an eyebrow, his cigarette dangling from his mouth. I looked up at the sprawling stained-glass window that marked the entrance to the Poller Academy. A dozen angelic faces cradling textbooks beamed down at me. “Not today,” I said, shaking my head.

  Danny’s face broke into a crooked grin as he stubbed out his cigarette. He grabbed my hand. “Excellent. I’ve gotta make a run anyway.”

  I followed him through the alley, back toward East Houston. The hum of New York traffic popped in my ears. I pulled my hand from his. “I haven’t been to Chemistry in, like, a week.”

  Danny tugged at the sleeves of his varsity jacket, covering his exposed wrists. “Come on, Claire. It’s cold.” He pulled me across the street.

  I followed.

  We wove through streets sprinkled in tiny lights and fat Santas. Rows of windows were lit up with gold and silver. Towers of shiny presents and fake snow threatened to swallow me as my heels clicked against the pavement. I tucked my head into my jacket and watched the sidewalk.

  “What time is it?” Danny glanced over at me. Then he snapped “Never mind” and rolled up his sleeve to check his watch. “I forgot. You can’t look at Christmas shit or your brain melts.”

  I swallowed back the sick feeling bubbling up in my throat and kept walking. The last notes of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” floated from a storefront across the street. It sounded how a million razor blades felt.

  “Stay here,” Danny said. I heard
the crunch of a paper bag as he shuffled through his jacket. “Be right back.”

  I stood on the corner, shivering under my scarf. “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” had turned into “The Little Drummer Boy,” and I hated that song even more. I always hated the last Christmas song more than the one before it. I turned toward the shop window.

  A white eyelet dress blinked down at me. A halo of light soaked it in gold as the delicate fabric hugged the mannequin. I pressed my palm to the glass.

  I tried to force it down, as I did the sickness in my throat, but her name clawed its way to the surface just like it always did.

  Ella.

  I bit my lip. Twelve-year-old Ella twirled in the buttery cornstalks, the hem of her sundress swishing against her bare legs. From somewhere far away, Mom called us in for dinner. “In a minute!” Ella yelled, pressing her pink hands to her mouth to stifle a giggle. I closed my eyes, but she was still there.

  I thought about buying the dress, wrapping it in silver and gold and sending it to her for Christmas. But I knew I never would. It would sit in a box under my bed, collecting dust with all of the other things I’d bought and never sent. All the things I wouldn’t know if a girl with a sewn-up face would even want anymore.

  I watched the air from the vent lift the hem of the fabric, my palm still pressed against the window. Besides, I wouldn’t even know what size to get.

  “Hey.” Danny slid in next to me, hooking his fingers around my belt loop. He pulled out a small plastic bottle from inside his jacket. “Got a little booze. You in?”

  I glanced back up at the dress. “Yeah, I’m in.”

  The two most important things I took with me when I left Amble, Ohio, two years ago were Ella’s periwinkle bird and enough guilt to suffocate me. I left almost everything else behind.

  The days following the incident were a blur. I know there was an unzipped suitcase that Mom shoved full of clothes I never liked, and hushed phone calls made by Dad. There was the beep, beep, beep of Ella’s hospital monitors and the tangle of gauze, dotted with blood, wrapped tightly around her face. There were whispers of stitches and speech therapy and hysteria and a brand new start in New York. And there were screams. I’m pretty sure they were mine.