Made of Stars Read online

  We don’t need to ask where and how he got it. Probably don’t even need to say thank you. (Dad only grunts in response when we do.) We pull up directions on my phone, yank our shoes back on, and run out the door.

  Hunter drives because I hate the truck. Too used to Mom’s tiny Jetta back home. The snow has let up, but the roads are still slick and tricky. My phone navigation tells us the address isn’t more than a ten-minute drive, but it’s in the complete opposite direction of anywhere we’ve ever gone. Once we turn off Pearson Street, the trees become denser, darker, and the road is rocky and uncared for, and eventually dead-ends into a cul-de-sac. We almost miss the narrow entryway into a mobile home park, barely visible through the trees.

  For a brief second, as Hunt parks the truck inside the unofficial entrance, I think this has to be a mistake. Chance used to talk about his house, about how big the windows were and how much he hated it, because anyone could come peeking inside while his parents were away. But his room was upstairs, so at least the peekers wouldn’t see his stuff and think to break in. They had a big basement with a ping-pong table, and a pool in the backyard. He’d tell us it was too bad his parents wouldn’t let him bring anyone over, because Hunter and I would totally love his house.

  This place is nothing like what Chance described.

  There aren’t more than eight mobile homes and a handful of trailers near the back. They’re spaced out, huddled against the line of trees like they’re trying to get as far away from one another as possible. At first glance, the whole place seems abandoned. Except I spot a couple cars parked here and there, and someone is looking through her curtains at us before yanking them closed again. Not abandoned, then. Just…

  Hunter and I exchange looks and get out of the truck.

  “Address?” Hunt asks.

  “6015 Stoneman Drive.” I shove the phone into my coat pocket. I don’t say anything about how wrong this feels, and neither does he. The questions lay between us, but we don’t have the courage to ask. Would Chance really lie about something like this? Did he think we would care if he didn’t live in some big fancy house? It’s not like we live in a mansion. My and Mom’s place in California is nice, but Hunter, Carol, and Boyfriend Bob live in a two-bedroom apartment. Maybe Chance moved. It’s always a possibility. Maybe his parents lost their jobs and had to get rid of the house.

  “You know,” I mumble, “I think the creek runs up this way. I bet that’s how Chance ended up at our place to begin with.”

  “Following the water.” Hunter pockets his hands as we walk down the road.

  Some of the homes are in better shape than others. Chance’s is somewhere in the middle of the niceness scale; the roof isn’t crumbling or caving in, and it doesn’t have windows knocked out, but it’s in dire need of a fresh coat of paint, and the porch steps creak dangerously. Off to the left is a rusted, crooked swing set that probably hasn’t seen a butt on its seat in a decade. There’s an old gray truck parked out front.

  Hunter knocks on the flimsy screen door. I linger at his side, scanning the porch. They seriously need to spray down the collection of cobwebs they have going on. This place gives me the creeps. I’m not sure I would have had the nerve to get out of the truck without Hunter by my side.

  A few minutes pass where no one answers, and my heart sinks.

  “What if this isn’t the right place?” I whisper. “What if Dad was wrong?”

  “Stop worrying. I’m sure it’s the right place.” Hunt takes a deep breath and knocks again, louder. Finally, we hear footsteps inside, and the front door swings open.

  The woman staring at us from behind the screen looks a lot older than my own mom but not old enough to be someone’s grandmother. Her hair is short and choppy, like she cuts it herself, and her face is gaunt and tired. She’s wearing a gray men’s bathrobe over a nightgown and pink slippers that have seen better days.

  She frowns. “Can I help you?”

  Hunter hesitates. He’s never been a talker, so I step forward. “Hi. Sorry to bother you. We’re looking for Chance?”

  The lady pushes open the screen door, causing us both to move back while she steps out onto the dirty welcome mat. This woman has to be related to Chance, a mother or maybe an aunt. There’s no way anyone in the world unrelated to him has eyes that green. At one point in time, I think she must’ve been really pretty. Now, she looks kind of…worn.

  “What do you want with Chance?” she asks, holding the screen open with her hip, a cigarette dangling from her fingers.

  “We’re friends of his. I’m Ashlin Jackson. This is my brother, Hunter.” Technically, I’m not a Jackson. Hunter got Dad’s last name, but I’m Ashlin Carmichael. But if Chance told his family about us, he would have referred to us as the Jacksons. “We were in town and thought we’d stop by to see him.” I offer out my gloved hand. The woman looks at it for a long moment before taking it, though there isn’t an ounce of warmth in the gesture; she’s just going through the motions.

  From behind her, a gruff voice calls, “Who is it, Tabby?”

  Possibly-Chance’s-Mom takes a drag off her cigarette, casting a glance over her shoulder as someone—Chance’s dad?—fills the doorway behind her. “Some of Chance’s friends.”

  The man is broad-shouldered and stone-faced, with a jaw that hasn’t seen a razor in a few days. The harsh downturn of his mouth makes it impossible for me to imagine him ever smiling the way Chance does. There are grease stains on his shirt. Overall, he is not the sort of guy I’d want to meet in a dark alley. “He isn’t here.”

  I try not to let my expression fall. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “How the fuck would I know? Kid takes off without any consideration for telling us what he’s up to.” With that, Mr. Harvey turns and retreats back into the house.

  Mrs. Harvey seems to relax with his absence and takes a drag off her cigarette. Her expression is only mildly apologetic. “He goes off and does his own thing, you see. I’ll let him know you stopped by, Ashley.”

  “Ashlin,” Hunter corrects. Mrs. Harvey gives him a hollow smile.

  “Right, yes. Bye now.”

  She steps back into the house and closes the door. The screen makes an obnoxious metallic sound when it clangs shut.

  Hunter

  What kind of parent says, “I don’t know” when you ask where her kid is? My mom would have a heart attack if I left without disclosing every detail of where I’d be, for how long, and who I’d be with. Maybe it’s because Dad doesn’t always drill us about where we’re going that I make the effort to let him know anyway, just in case. Especially since it’s his truck we’re using most of the time.

  The next two weeks, Ash and I mostly hang out near the house. We gut our bedrooms (and Dad’s new one, for that matter) in order to redecorate, and both of us just…wait for Chance to come knocking at the door.

  He doesn’t.

  We also head to the creek every couple of days to wander up and down the banks, Ash taking pictures of anything and everything like she’s done ever since Dad bought her a camera when she was ten. We’ve been hit with a weird wave of…not heat, but I guess “less cold”? It hasn’t snowed in more than a week, and it’s not the right temperature for the creek to be iced over. It bubbles and rumbles quietly, occasionally dislodging some of the dirtied snow off the shore and carrying it along for the ride.

  Ash makes me nervous every time she creeps down the bank and tries to get a picture of this. I’ve already caught her by the back of her coat once to keep her from slipping. At one point, I turn away, distracted by birds in the trees, and Ash lets out a soft curse that startles me into whipping around, ready to snatch her away from the edge if she’s falling.

  Instead, she gives me a frown and a pout, holding out her camera. “My memory card is full. Can you run inside and switch it out for me?”

  My shoulders slump. I take the camera, give her a withering look, and retreat to the house. It takes me no time to find the memory card she
wants; I was lying on her bed last night, reading, while she had it in her computer to empty it out. I switch the cards, pocket the camera, and head back outside. Just as I’m hitting the back porch—

  Ash screams.

  I leap down the steps and tear into the woods. My heart is in my throat. Ashlin isn’t where I left her, which means she’s wandered one way or the other up the creek and I have no idea where.

  “Ash!”

  “Over here!” Her voice is distant but not panicked. I push through the pale trees just in time to spot both of them: Chance slogging through the water with Ash clinging to his neck. My breath catches as he looks up with those too-green eyes and smirks.

  “Rescue operation,” he says, breathless. “Saved Barbie from drowning.”

  I push a hand through my hair, trying not to laugh. The banks are muddy and steep; Chance helps Ash up high enough to grab my hand so I can haul her out. She looks like a drowned cat, blond hair plastered to her face and neck, clothes clinging to her body. Her boots squish when I get her up on solid ground with a shake of my head. “I really wish you’d stop and think things through before you get yourself into these situations.” Chance waves off my extended hand and pulls himself out effortlessly using exposed roots and rocks jutting from the dirt.

  I wonder if I look as different to him as he does to me. Gone are his Coke bottle glasses, which I’m glad for, because those eyes? You could lose yourself in them, but I try not to think about that because it’s weird and totally not okay. He’s dyed his hair black, cut it short, haphazardly spiked it. His black cargo pants have more pockets than I can count and drip steadily. Chance used to be half my size. He’s still shorter than I am, but not by much. A couple of inches, maybe.

  “Hello?” Ash says. “Earth to Hunt. I need the house key!”

  I blink, breaking eye contact with Chance in order to fumble the keys from my pocket. She snatches them out of my hand and rushes off. It takes me a second to realize she must be heading inside to change.

  And now it’s just us. For some reason, the way Chance smiles so lazily at me results in a faint heat creeping into my face. I try to think of what to say and come up with nothing witty or charming. Instead I’m stuck with, “Hey. How’s it going?”

  “Wetly.” Chance shrugs.

  This time, my blush isn’t nearly so subtle. “Oh, crap—sorry, let’s get you inside.” Were it summer, we could stand ten minutes in the sun and be bone-dry again, but not in this weather. Besides that, he’s filthy from climbing up the embankment.

  As Chance follows me back to the house, I keep stealing glances at him. We’ve spent all this time waiting for him to show up and now that he’s here, it doesn’t feel real. In the back of my brain, I stored up all these thoughts and questions to say to him, and now every one of them is lost to me. “We went to your house a few weeks ago.”

  Chance nods. “Yep. I was told.”

  “We were starting to worry you’d moved away or something.”

  His laugh is sharp. “Are you kidding? I’ve got a life sentence to this town. I was beginning to think you ditched me.”

  “Our moms didn’t want to let us visit while Dad was recovering.” We tromp up the back steps to the porch, careful not to slip on the icy wood. “You heard what happened to Dad, right?” No need to say we did come out to visit Dad a few times over school holidays but didn’t know how to contact Chance. Besides, Dad might have been pretty hurt if I came for three days and ditched him to spend time with friends.

  I feel kind of guilty knowing that I probably would have. Even if only for a few hours to spend with Chance. I could e-mail Dad or talk to him on the phone. But if I wasn’t looking right at Chance, able to reach out and touch him if I wanted, then we had zero contact. And I missed him.

  “Of course. How’s he doing?”

  “Better. A lot better.” We let ourselves in through the back door. Chance lingers in the kitchen while I get him a towel. When I come back, he’s staring up at some of the family photos on the wall, drip-drip-dripping on the floor but not seeming to notice. I chuck the towel in his direction. He catches it one-handed.

  “We don’t need a swimming pool in the kitchen,” I say. Chance shrugs and steps aside into the laundry room, letting the door fall half closed. I can hear him shimmying out of his clothes. Shirt, pants, socks. I lean against the doorframe, staring at nothing in particular. “You can toss those in the washer.” I hear him do just that before emerging with the towel draped around his shoulders, the only thing covering him from the waist up. He’s managed to locate a pair of my sweatpants in the laundry, apparently, and I can’t help but grin at how terribly they fit him. We’re closer in height, but I still outweigh him by a fair amount.

  “You’ve gotten taller,” he observes. “And…muscle-y. What’ve you been doing, bench-pressing trucks?”

  I give him a small smile, rubbing the back of my neck. “Swimming and track. Mom likes to keep me busy so I don’t do something stupid with my free time, I guess.”

  Chance lounges with one shoulder to the wall, like it was built to support him. “Joining gangs, robbing banks, that sort of thing?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I can totally picture it, you criminal, you.” He tips his head, looking behind me. Ash has decided to grace us with her presence and— Oh, cute. She’s wearing a dress, and she took the time to put on lipstick and mascara. She’s pulled her wet hair up into a twist with clips and pins. No wonder she was so quick to run inside.

  She sidles up beside me, flashing Chance her brightest smile. “Guess I owe you for saving my life and all that.”

  “Any time.” Chance doesn’t even try to be discreet when he drops his gaze and lets it wander up the length of her legs. And Ash really is all legs. I can’t figure out if the little knot in my stomach is because he’s checking her out—even if he’s only playing around—or because she’s checking him out. Either way, I feel momentarily out of place. Doesn’t help that Ash leans forward, touching a fingertip to his chest, and asks, “What’s that on your back? Let me see.”

  Chance lifts his eyebrows, but he does as asked and twists around. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it. There, on Chance’s back, is the constellation of Draco, each star done with intricate detail and a pale line traveling from one star to the next, forming the dragon he loves so much. With Chance’s lean frame, every breath, every movement makes a muscle or bone somewhere in his back shift and ripple the little stars.

  “Did it hurt?” Ash asks, fascinated, looking like she wants to trace the tattoo from top to bottom. I kind of do, too.

  Always one to soak up attention, Chance smiles. “Not really. You like?”

  “It’s awesome.” She grins. “Mom and Dad would flip if I asked for a tattoo before I’m, like, thirty.”

  Chance rolls his shoulders into a shrug. “If you’re asking your parents for permission for anything at thirty, you’ve got bigger problems than them saying no.”

  She smacks him on the arm and he laughs, catching hold of her wrist and taking care in the way he twists her arm around her back and holds her there. Ash giggles, calling for me to rescue her, and I snake an arm around Chance to get him in a loose headlock.

  And I think how incredible this is, that we’ve been together less than twenty minutes but things are already slipping into how they’ve always been. How they should always be. We’ve fallen into this easy pattern of teasing and laughing, and I like it.

  I’ve missed this familiarity. I’ve missed being home.

  Ashlin

  I go to sleep afraid I’ll wake up in the morning and find myself back in California. Away from Dad and Hunter and Chance. But Chance is there again the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. Waiting for Hunter and me just like he used to when we were kids. Sometimes we find him at the creek, sometimes on the back steps staring up at the sky. Sometimes Dad spots him and invites him in, and he’s eating breakfast at our kitchen table when we come downstairs,
still in our pajamas.

  Today, Chance is at the creek, which is trying to ice itself over again. It’s freezing outside, but he still isn’t wearing a jacket. He isn’t trying to skip stones so much as throw them at the water, and I wonder what the creek ever did to him.

  “How are you not getting hypothermia?” I ask. Chance graces me with a smile.

  “I’m not a wimp like you Californians who’ve never seen snow.”

  “Hey, we get snow. Just not where I live.”

  He shrugs. “Whatever. Where’s your brother? We have places to go.”

  I can’t help but grin, eager to see where Chance is leading us. Even the most mundane of places is made exciting with him along. After day in and day out of dealing with Mom trying to control every aspect of my life, being out here and going on adventures with Chance and Hunter is a breath of fresh air. “Probably talking to Rachael. He’ll be here soon.”

  Chance arches an eyebrow. “Rachael?”

  “Yeah. Girlfriend.” We turn to wander back to the porch. “He didn’t tell you?” It seems weird Rachael wouldn’t have come up once in conversation, when we’ve spent the last several days catching up.

  “Nope.” He looks away, expression unreadable. “Must not be anything serious.”

  “No, it is.” I frown, feeling oddly defensive on Rachael’s behalf, since she isn’t here to defend herself. “They’ve been together for, like, a year now.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Carol adores her.” Not that Hunt has ever cared what his mom, Carol, thinks about his relationships, but whatever. “So does Dad.”

  I have this image in my head of what Rachael and Hunt’s relationship must be like. What it should be like. This perfect high school romance that stretches out into college and leads to marriage and kids. Like I’ve always wanted for myself and never managed to find. I mean, I haven’t met Rachael, but I’ve never heard a bad word spoken about her. She’s sweet and very smart, Carol told me once on the phone. She’s the perfect kind of girl for Hunter. She’ll keep his head out of the clouds.