Made of Stars (6 page)

“Don’t ask her,” Chance cuts in. “Let me prove it. Let me work today and I guarantee, by the time the shop closes, you’ll be begging me to stay.”

Deb looks at me, looks at him. And, because there isn’t a lot to lose—except maybe customers, I want to point out—she sighs and shrugs. “Whatever. Ashlin, get him an apron.” She wanders off for her morning coffee.

Chance grins.

Hunter

After work, I head straight to the pizzeria around the block to meet up with Chance and Ash. My phone is going off. It has been through most of work. I ignore it, because I told Rachael I had to work today, and I know she thinks part-time at a grocery store doesn’t count as
real work
and therefore I can be disturbed or…something.

I’m making a point by not answering. Because that’s only fair, right?

Ever since I told her I loved her, things have been changing. Subtle changes, but changes nonetheless. She calls more often. She sounds more cheerful—which, I mean, is a good thing—but it’s been…

Smothering. Yeah, that’s the word.

And considering I was feeling a little claustrophobic to begin with, that is really not sitting well with me.

I’ve already ordered a large pizza, breadsticks, and drinks, and I’m on my second slice by the time Chance and Ash show up. Chance is grinning from ear to ear as he sinks into the booth beside me, his hip to my hip, and slowly any thoughts of Rachael seep to the back of my brain. Ash sits across from us, looking bewildered.

“Chance got the job,” she says.

I arch an eyebrow, glancing between them. “Really? Well, that’s great. I thought you said your shift manager was kind of a tight-ass?”

“Oh, she is.” Chance leans across me to grab a slice of pizza. “But she also thinks I’m cute.”

Ash rolls her eyes and helps herself to pizza, too. “No. She really doesn’t. Chance bullied her into letting him work for a day to prove he could do it. He ended up taking, like, eight special orders, and the customers adore him.”

“Because I’m cute,” Chance says again around a mouthful of food. “I filled out all my paperwork. I’ll be on the same shift as Ash, so I can hitch a ride with you guys.”

I shrug. The fact that Chance has a job is great, so I should probably be feeling happier than I do. If I’d known he was serious about it, I could have gotten him work at the grocery store. “Fine, but let us pick you up at your place. It’s too cold for you to be walking to our house every day.”

Just like that, the smile vanishes from his face. He’s silent for the length of time it takes him to bite, chew, swallow, before he says, “No. I like walking.”

“It’s fine for now,” Ash says. “But seriously? Dad said the temperatures here get ridiculous in winter. Your house isn’t that far out of the way.”

“I said
no
,” Chance snaps. He takes one look at Ashlin’s stricken expression and turns away, yanking pepperoni off his pizza. “It’s just easier. I’d rather walk.”

Ash opens her mouth like she might say something further. I give her leg a nudge under the table, and she stops, frowns, and turns her attention to her food. We struck a nerve, obviously. Pushing Chance to talk about it will backfire. He isn’t even looking at us anymore. As far as he’s concerned, the subject is closed. His eyes are glued to the old television mounted in the corner; it’s too low for us to hear, but the subtitles scroll along the bottom, disjointed and not entirely coherent.

Ash and I twist in our seats to watch, too. Better than staring down at the table while we eat in awkward silence. The newscaster is talking about a family in New Jersey, murdered by their daughter in cold blood. Her parents and two younger siblings were all poisoned at dinner.

“How could any kid do that?” Ash mutters. “I mean, I kind of want to punch my mom in the mouth sometimes, but—”

“Drastic measures.” Chance sets the crust aside. He never eats it. “Maybe she and her parents didn’t get along.”

“She was seventeen.” Ash straightens and focuses her frown on Chance. “Even if she were that miserable, it’s not like she had long to go before she could leave.”

“Sometimes that isn’t the point.” Chance licks the grease from his fingers, slowly because he’s still focused on the television. “People killing their spouses, their children, their parents… Obviously, there’s something wrong in their heads. They needed help. No one knew to give it to them.”

“Doesn’t make it right,” Ash insists.

“No, it doesn’t. I’m just saying…to that particular person, maybe she didn’t realize there are other options. Maybe, for some of them, there
aren’t
other options. When you feel that trapped, that smothered, like they’re breaking you… When you feel like you’re going down anyway, you might as well take them along.” Chance finally looks at us again. Whatever irritation was there moments ago is gone, replaced by a subdued, vacant shine to his eyes that makes me uncomfortable.

“Sometimes,” he says, “people get desperate, and no one is listening.”

Ashlin says nothing. I have the strongest urge to reach out and put my hand on Chance’s cheek, to try to make him smile again because I can’t stand that look on his face. Everything about it is wrong and un-Chance-like. I don’t, because I wouldn’t know how to explain it without it coming across in all the wrong ways. I already told my girlfriend I loved her when I don’t; that sort of fills my yearly quota for messing up my relationships.

We finish our late lunch, pile into the car, and head home. Rather than stop by the house, though, I follow the road until we hit the dirt of Stoneman Drive. Chance straightens up in the backseat.

“What the hell are you doing?”

At the end of his street I stop, out of view of the mobile home park. I peer at Chance in the rearview mirror. “Compromising. You know how to do that, right?”

Chance’s mouth is drawn tight, but his shoulders relax as he pushes open his door. “Yeah. See you guys tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Ash says. We don’t work tomorrow, which means we might be off on some other adventure that Chance has come up with for us. He slides out of the car, hands shoved in his pockets as he heads down the road.

“Maybe he’s embarrassed by his house,” Ash murmurs. “Or his parents. They obviously aren’t who he said they were.”

“Maybe.” It’s the first time we’ve admitted this to each other out loud: Chance lied. About a lot. He told us about the big house and how his parents were always gone because of work. It has me rethinking everything Chance has ever told me—because the lies we’ve caught him on aren’t little things. It isn’t
I didn’t take the last of the cookies
. It’s
My entire life isn’t what I said it was.

I think about the bruises on Chance the night he stayed over. Ash says he’s embarrassed; I hope that’s all it is. Too bad things with him are never that simple. I remember the year he broke his arm. The times he refused to go swimming because he didn’t want to take off his shirt. All the times Dad did something nice for him, and Chance would look up with the biggest eyes and say, “You’re way better than any other dad, Mr. J.” Like doing something as simple as buying him a shirt or an ice cream cone made him Super-dad.

I’m questioning everything now, searching for the hidden meanings behind it all. Wondering which parts were true and which parts weren’t.

As I pull forward to turn the car around, I catch one last glimpse of Chance stepping off the road. Moving away from his house and into the trees.

…

We went to the beach all the time growing up, but never directly to Harper’s Beach. To be fair, it isn’t a swimming-friendly sort of beach—more rocks than sand, and the tide can be a little vicious at times. But besides that, Dad probably didn’t want us asking questions about Hollow Island, which is perfectly visible from Harper’s Beach, and not so much from the one we went to on the other side of Hollow Point. He was probably worried we’d get ideas about visiting the island.

Which is true. We would have gotten all sorts of ideas.

Which is why we snuck out there once with Chance instead.

As we stood on Harper’s shore with the ocean lapping at our feet, Chance, at thirteen, told us the history of the island while we stared, transfixed.

“They had plans to build a bridge to connect the island to the mainland,” he said. “There are buildings over there. Kinda hard to see, huh? But they’re out there. Some houses and stuff. Weird, creepy problems and accidents kept happening while they were plotting the construction of the bridge, though, so they finally gave up and abandoned the island all together. Some say it’s haunted.”

I didn’t think to ask who
they
were. City officials, I guess. I never researched it online then, and I don’t plan to, because it would take away some of the magic Chance has built around it. The island really did look like a piece of land humanity forgot.

“I swam there once,” Chance announced.

Ash marveled at him, as she always did at his stories, but I frowned. “You did not.”

“Did, too!”

“It’s, like, miles out there. No one could swim that unless you’re in the Olympics or something.”

“Not
miles
.” Chance sniffed indignantly, chucking a rock as far into the water as he could. “I could do it again, too, if I wanted.”

I crossed my arms. “Do it, then.”

The two of us were always like that. Daring each other. More often than not, I was the one who backed down because the things Chance dared me to do were way too out there. Like stealing the huge cardboard cutout of the donut on the roof of Happy Donut, or going to the mall wearing Ash’s clothes—which never would have fit me anyway. Chance, though, was up for anything. There wasn’t much he’d skip out on.

That was one of the rare times he did. Of course, it wasn’t backing down to Chance. He wrinkled his nose, eyes unreadable behind the huge sunglasses perched on his freckled face. He turned away.

“That’s stupid. Why would I swim all that way while you cowards stay here?”

…

Chance knows all the best vantage points to see Hollow Island and where we can more or less safely scale down the cliffs to little coves below. Trees lining the cliffs are half bare, their bony arms stretching to the moody gray sky. The waves crashing against the shore seem angrier than I remember, more urgent, and the wind whips at my hair and pulls at my coat. Chance stands right at the ledge, overlooking Hollow Island and the beach, so close the tips of his shoes peek over the rocks. I grab his arm out of reflex, and he looks at me and laughs.

It isn’t that I’m afraid of heights. I’m afraid of Chance-and-heights.

Climbing isn’t much fun. Chance goes down first, careful to watch his footholds and handholds but moving with such ease it’s obvious how often he does this. I follow, slower, making sure not to risk looking down. I don’t understand why we don’t drive the mile and a half up the road to Harper’s where we can reach the water not twenty feet off the side of the road, but there’s no talking sense into Chance. This is the place he likes.

Ashlin doesn’t budge from the cliff above. Not until Chance and I are safely at the bottom, staring up and beckoning her to follow. I cup my hands around my mouth. “Stop worrying. It’s fine!”

“We’ll catch you!” Chance calls. Our voices are dulled by the waves.

Ash looks like she has half a mind to flip us off and go back to the car, but she finally starts her descent down the jagged cliff-face for the beach below. When she has about six feet left, she drops the rest of the way, wincing on impact and falling on her ass. I help her up, but I can’t stop laughing.

“See?” Chance says. “Not so bad.”

We cross the rocks to where the water rushes in to meet our feet. It’s too cold to take off my shoes, so instead the ocean soaks through the canvas of my sneakers and the socks beneath, instantly numbing my toes.

From here, we have—what Chance would say is, and I’m inclined to agree—the best view of Hollow Island.

I take a breath and spread my arms wide. The salty winter air here is delicious. Revitalizing. “So…we’re here. Now what?”

Chance crouches, unbothered by the tide licking at his jeans. “I’ve decided.”

“Decided what?” Ash asks.

“We’re going to get onto that island.”

My arms fall limp at my sides. We’re both staring at Chance in a way that suggests we think he’s lost his mind. Chance glances at us, nose wrinkling.

“What? Jesus, I didn’t say we were going to
swim
, did I? We’ll buy a raft.”

“A raft,” Ash and I say together.

“One of those big inflatable ones, yeah? Doesn’t have to be fancy. Can get one for a hundred bucks with our next paychecks. It can be my Christmas present.”

“We’d also need oars,” Ash points out. “Rafts don’t steer themselves.”

Chance shrugs. “Well, whatever.”

I ask, “What are we supposed to do on the island?”

“Look around. Take pictures. We can play hide-and-go-seek for all I care; the island is great for stuff like that.”

Ash frowns. “How do you know?”

Chance scowls. “I told you before that I’ve been there.”

Yeah, he did. He said he swam, which is a fact I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around. “Nuh uh. No way in hell.”

“Seriously?” Chance heaves a heavy sigh. “There’s a big brick building in the middle of the island where you can see all around you. Just wait. Now, are you guys going to do this with me or what? I can go by myself.”

I stare out at the island. The breeze whips the hair back from my face, and my cheeks have begun to sting from the cold. Rachael will be out in a few days to visit for Christmas and New Year’s, and she would not approve of this idea. In fact, she would disapprove so much she’d probably burst a blood vessel while lecturing me. It’s going to make things really interesting when she visits—and by
interesting
, I mean I might want to throw myself out of a moving vehicle by the time she leaves.

But I’ve wanted to see the island for myself since Chance brought us here years ago. How many more adventures like this will I be granted before I have to apply for college and leave this behind? Rachael says that’s what it means to
grow up
.