Of Scars and Stardust Read online

I looked at them again while he watched me. The map was something that must have been pulled out of an ancient library book. To me, it looked like nothing more than paper filled with red arrows and dotted with faded trees. To Dr. Barges, it looked like the truth.

  “Follow this arrow,” he said, and his finger appeared on the map. It swooped through Canada and into the shaded splotches of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and the northern tip of Ohio. “There is positively no wolf population in New York. So we have to come to the conclusion that the wolves you feel are following you simply cannot exist.”

  I nodded obediently. I used to fight back when Dr. Barges brought out the map. But then I figured out it was safer this way, with the pretending.

  He shuffled the contents of the folder until an article stared up at me from my lap. “Why don’t you re-read this again, just as a refresher.” I bent my head over the page and watched the letters snap together, although they didn’t make words in my head. They didn’t need to; I already knew what they said.

  “What does it say?” he asked softly.

  Acid bubbled up in my stomach, along with guilt. I couldn’t help but think that this is how Rae must have felt, back in Amble, when she preached everything she knew about the wolves, warning everyone to trash their cherry lip balm and periwinkle socks (although she refused to take her own advice and still hauled cherry vodka into the cornfields). No one ever listened to her. Just like Dr. Barges never listened to me, and insisted I recite passages from books he’d picked as proof.

  “It says that wolves almost never attack humans unless provoked.” I swiveled my chair around so I didn’t have to look at him.

  That’s exactly what the police thought, too. They said that if Ella’s attack had been caused by wolves, or raccoons, or whatever, she must have teased them. But they hadn’t seen the look on her face as she trudged out of the clearing that night. I don’t even think she knew I’d seen it. Her eyes were polluted with fear, and her bottom lip trembled just before she pulled it between her teeth. There was no way Ella was going to stop on the way home to taunt some animal. She wanted to get through the cornfield and under her twinkle lights as fast as she could; that I knew for sure.

  “Exactly,” said Dr. Barges. “So, we have the map that tells us the wolves cannot exist here, and the articles that tell us it’s not in a wolf’s nature to attack humans. Think about those things and imagine another alternative to those paw prints you saw. What else could have created them?”

  The acid rolled over into my throat, into my mouth, and it felt like poison eating away at my tongue. I stood up and my “file” fluttered to the carpet. “I don’t know. Whatever you want me to believe. Dogs, okay? It was probably big dogs running around Manhattan. Or a raccoon.” I tugged my purse over my shoulder. “I need to go meet my aunt.”

  Dr. Barges tilted his head and watched me for a second as he rubbed the skin on his neck. “You know, Claire, have you thought about taking a trip back home? Perhaps to visit your sister?”

  I blinked into the sun, waiting for his words to melt into my brain and make sense. But they just rolled around and stumbled all over each other. “Go visit my sister?” I repeated dumbly.

  “Yes, go visit your sister. Back in Ohio. It’s been a long time since you’ve been home to see your family.”

  I barely registered his words. Ella’s pink cheeks and orange mittens bloomed in my thoughts. What would she say to me if I showed up at her door? More importantly, what could she say to me, and what would her words sound like coming from a semi-new face? The thought made me desperately sad and hopeful at the same time.

  I chewed on my lip and stared out at the skyline. Little dots of snow clung along edges of the windows. It reminded me of how the first snowflakes used to line the weathervane outside our house, making the arrow blink white against the sky.

  “Claire?”

  “I don’t want to go home,” I said, turning to look at him.

  Dr. Barges leaned back and rubbed the loose skin around his neck. He cleared his throat and said, “And why not?”

  Because there are wolves there that are waiting for me. Ella’s note said they’re waiting.

  In my mind, I was holding the crumpled slip of paper in my hand. Ella’s loopy writing, the crooked letters that smiled up at me—those never changed, even though the sounds they made were trapped behind her stitches. Her perfect little hands had pressed the paper into my palm just before the nurse came to tell me visiting hours were over that day. Just before Mom pressed a train ticket to Grand Central Station into my other palm.

  They’re watching you, Claire.

  ten

  My heart flip-flopped. Even after the riot of police and IV bags and morphine and bloody snow, Ella had still believed me. She knew that it was the wolves that did this, that they were real. She knew that they were waiting for me, too.

  That’s what I wanted to say, what I almost threw up like word vomit all over Dr. Barge’s stupid plaid tie. But I’d learned a long time ago to pretend that the wolves weren’t real, so I instead I said, “I just don’t want to go home.”

  Dr. Barges cleared his throat again, which was seriously getting annoying. He did that whenever he wasn’t sure how to take me and he needed extra time to think. Then he let out a soft puff of air. “Fears and phobias don’t just go away on their own, Claire. You can’t hide from them forever.”

  “I’m not hiding from anything,” I said, standing. “I live in New York now. There’s nothing I can get in Amble that I can’t get here.”

  He took a sip from his water bottle and swished it around his mouth. I rolled my eyes again and turned toward the window. I swear, a conversation with Dr. Barges took ten times longer than it had to, with all of his stupid coughing and drinking and neck-rubbing.

  Finally he swallowed and set his elbows on the table. “You and I both know this isn’t about what you can purchase in New York City. I’m afraid that until you decide to face your phobia of the wolves, right at their origin, you’ll feel haunted by your past forever.” He stood and looped his fingers around his belt buckle. “Sometimes the unknown is far scarier than what’s really there, when you’re ready to look.”

  I glanced at the clock ticking on his desk. “Looks like I’ve taken up my fifty minutes.” I shoved on my coat and grabbed Ella’s old polka-dot scarf, wrapping it loosely around my neck. “See you next week.”

  I was almost out the door when I heard him cough again, and I knew it was coming. “Hey Claire,” he said, and I slowed but didn’t turn around. “Just think about it, okay?”

  “Will do,” I said, and I was out the door.

  Not long after I arrived in New York, I realized that Amble was made of just as much concrete as Manhattan, maybe even more. Even though its cornfields and dirt roads swayed with the wind and softened with the rain, everyone who lived there was hardened with cement on the inside. You went to church every Sunday even if you didn’t believe in God. You blamed disappearances and stitched-up faces on rabid raccoons. You believed, or you didn’t. Most of the time you didn’t.

  Which was why people like Rae ended up running away as many times as it took to break free; they weren’t crammed with enough cement, they weren’t quite heavy enough to stay put. They still believed in stars and wolves and that magic or something like it existed. And if they’d stayed, Amble would have punished them for it.

  It was for this reason that Dr. Barges’s little lesson in logic melted off me as soon as I stepped onto the street. Because the thing about evidence is, you can find it anywhere. For every stupid migration map, there was one of Rae’s stories.

  For every scientific journal article, there was the flash of gray in the cornfields, the snap of a stalk, or Sarah Dunnard’s blood staining the cornstalks by Lark Lake after her disappearance. And then there was Ella’s note:

  They’re watching you, Claire.

  I
glanced between the buildings as I turned onto 37th. I called Danny’s cell phone four times before I reached the fabric store. And then I sent him my fifteenth text. He never answered.

  I’d hoped that after his brain started working again and his eyes defogged, he’d text and tell me that he was sorry. And then he’d tell me to come over because his parents weren’t home and he had a birthday present for me. But he must have remembered his words: Call me when you stop being such a freak. And he must have thought that twenty-four hours wasn’t long enough to cure the freak out of me, because he didn’t even bother with a “happy birthday” text back.

  A blast of something cinnamon slapped me in the face as I stepped into the shop. I instantly caught Aunt Sharon’s bleached hair bobbing through the reams of green and blue chiffon.

  “Hey,” I breathed, trying to force the cold air out of my lungs. “What are you looking at?”

  “Hi, honey! How was your session with Dr. Barges?” She wrapped me up in a tight hug, like if she didn’t smash me to her peacoat I would run away before she could catch me.

  I pulled the ends of her hair from my face and said, “It was fine. He’s not worried about me.”

  She let me go and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. No matter what I told her, she always had that sad look in her eyes. I think I could have told her I’d won the New York State lottery and was giving her half of it, and she’d still look like that.

  “Really, I’m fine,” I said, smiling. The motion felt weird around my teeth. “Starving.”

  Aunt Sharon’s face broke into a real smile, the kind that people use freely until something almost destroys them. Then they reserve those smiles for something fantastic enough to make the muscles in their mouth twitch. “It’s too early for dinner, so why don’t we hit up this shop first. Dinner’s at Lombardi’s at seven.”

  I scrunched my nose. “That’s, like, two hours from now.”

  Aunt Sharon shrugged. “It was the only time open. We’ll get you one of those pretzels to tide you over!” She wrapped her arm my shoulder. “Come on, let’s go look at the eyelet. That’s what you were hoping to get yesterday, right?”

  “Yep.” I felt the heat creeping into my neck and ears. I’d told Aunt Sharon that I didn’t come home with a ream of eyelet last night because the shop was out of the color I wanted. I always felt bad when I lied, but somehow I kept doing it anyway; lies just dribbled out of my mouth because they felt like it.

  A tinny sound wafted from Aunt Sharon’s oversized purse, and she swore under her breath as she raked through the dozens of crumpled receipts to find her phone. “Damn it, where is that—hello?” she answered, her voice breathless. She stepped away from me and the cramped aisles to take the call.

  When she disappeared around the corner, I moved toward the back of the store. This was where the eyelet stayed hidden, mostly because it was used for table cloths and fancy napkins that you don’t have to throw away. But sometimes it was used for delicate dresses for girls with pink cheeks.

  Tears pricked the corners of my eyes as I stared at a row of it. I wrapped a tuft of white eyelet in my fingers and pressed my thumb into the delicate holes. In my mind, I saw myself stitching a hem and snipping triangles in the fabric until they resembled sleeves.

  I threw down my handful of fabric and turned away.

  Why am I always so hellbent on torturing myself?

  Why did I want to make a dress for a girl who probably wouldn’t even take it from me?

  As if on cue, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” floated down on my shoulders like soft snow. I leaned my head back, the eyelet pressed into my hair, and laughed. While there was very little I remembered from the days following the incident, one image constantly flicked across my eyelids: Ella, a bloody snow angel in the cornfield, staring up at the sky, like if something hadn’t clipped her wings she would have returned home.

  And then: singing, soft and shaky. For a long time I hadn’t realized it was me, my voice floating in the space between life and darkness.

  And then: a feeling like my own blood was draining from my body, pooling with Ella’s in the clumps of snow. But now I know that it was hope, not blood, leaking from me. I never did get it back.

  And then: a hand on my shoulder, hurried syllables, a pair of eyes the color of a cloudy morning.

  And then: screaming.

  I wasn’t crazy. I just loved Ella. And I was ready to do anything to keep my promise, to keep her safe from the things she feared the most.

  She gave me that note for a reason.

  “Claire?” Aunt Sharon turned the corner and caught me with my eyes closed against the eyelet. When I looked at her, her eyes were watery and the lines around her mouth were still tight.

  I blinked. “What is it?” I whispered, but the sinking feeling in my chest told me I already knew

  “I just … ” she started, pinching the bridge of her nose. The details around her were starting to come into focus. For the first time, I saw her fingers shake as they clutched her cell phone. And the way she’d shoved her wallet back into her purse, like she wouldn’t have time to use it.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. I started chewing on my lip, because something prickly at the back of my brain was already whispering her name, and my heartbeat began to throb in my ears.

  Aunt Sharon closed her eyes and breathed, like what she was about to say was so heavy she had to take a second to pull together the strength to say it. I waited, but I already knew. Sisters just know.

  “Claire, I don’t know how you’re going to take this, so I think it’s best if we just take a cab back home and talk.” She reached for my hand. “I don’t have all the details yet, but it’s about Ella.”

  eleven

  I hadn’t thought about Rae Buchanan in more than five second spurts since I’d left Amble, but she was all I thought about as Aunt Sharon’s muffled voice droned through her bedroom door.

  One time, when Rae and I were eleven and ten, and Ella was seven, we went out into the cornfield to have a tea party. Ella had wanted to have one so badly she’d jumped on my bed every morning for a week, begging me to pack up the plastic tea set with her and take it into the field. But she said it wasn’t really a party unless there were at least three people there—three girls—and so I convinced Rae to come too.

  As we set up the plastic cups and stale banana muffins, Rae told me for the first time that she was leaving Amble as soon as she could. I remember ice dripping into my stomach when she told me, and the feeling of cold running under my skin. But it wasn’t because Rae said she was leaving; it was the way Ella looked when she said it. Her eyes grew as round as moons, but she wasn’t scared. There was something else prickling up inside of her—interest. She didn’t tell Rae she shouldn’t go, or that she was stupid for leaving, like I did. I remembered her just asking a lot of questions: Why would you leave? How are you going to leave? When?

  Rae was my best friend, but I knew I could learn to live without her. I think there was a part of me that expected all along that Rae would eventually leave me. She always reminded me of a caged animal—pacing, staring out between the bars with wide eyes. Waiting until someone left the door ajar, even for a second.

  Ella, however, I thought would stay.

  And at first, it seemed like she would. She was the golden child of Amble, the dimple-faced girl filled with laughter and light. Ella always got her choice of part in church plays (which was usually some oddball, obscure part like the angel or townsperson #2 in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat). She played soccer and decorated her ceiling with stars and lightning bolts, and secretly painted Ella lives here on a bench in town with orange nail polish. She had it all in Amble. Why would she ever leave?

  So when Aunt Sharon eventually came out of her room, her face raw and swollen, I couldn’t help but think that whatever had happened to Ella wasn’t because she’d
wanted it to.

  “Claire, sit down.” Aunt Sharon patted the couch next to her. “I need to tell you some bad news.”

  I sat and I waited.

  “It’s about Ella.”

  I nodded, trying to swallow down the impatience bubbling in my chest. We’d been over this.

  Aunt Sharon took a deep breath and said, “She’s missing.”

  I waited.

  And I felt nothing.

  But it wasn’t the same kind of nothing I’d felt when I found Ella half-dead in the cornfield two years ago. It wasn’t the kind of nothing that consumed me so that I could stare at bloody rip across her face and still be able to sing her Christmas carols.

  This nothing felt empty.

  I assumed that part of the emptiness was because I already knew that something terrible had happened to her. But I figured the rest of it was because I’d expected it all along, since the day I left Amble.

  I’d taunted the wolves my whole life, yelled into the stalks that they weren’t real. I’d teased them that night, splashing the snow with cherry vodka and dangling periwinkle yarn into the star-splattered sky.

  The wolves were still after me. They wouldn’t stop hunting until they killed me.

  They’re watching you, Claire.

  They’d waited as long as they could, watching for my hair to get tangled in corn leaves so they could tear out

  my throat when I wasn’t paying attention. They’d followed me in the shadows of the city and painted the streets red with their bloody paws. But when I left Amble, I’d never come back.

  So they took her as ransom.

  They wanted me back in Amble.

  “Claire!” A finger snapped in front of my face. “Claire, are you going to pass out?” Aunt Sharon started to press the buttons on her cell phone, probably to call an ambulance or something overdramatic like that.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine.” I pulled the phone out of her hand. “I’m not going to pass out, I swear.”