Where the Stars Still Shine(12)

“What’s your name?” she asks. “I’m Kat.”

“Callie.”

Her brown eyes widen and she clutches my forearm. “Oh my God! You’re Callie! You’re here!”

“Um—”

“This is so—you have no idea,” she says. “You’re a local legend. Every few years the newspaper runs a story about you and your mom. They speculate on where you might be, interview people who claim to have seen you, and show age-enhanced pictures of how you might look. You’re much prettier, by the way, but—this is so exciting! I knew Greg rushed off to pick you up, but I didn’t expect to meet you so soon! I bet you’re glad to be home with your dad, huh?”

“I don’t really remember him.”

“Wow.” Kat’s shoulders sag. “I guess because I’ve known him my whole life, it didn’t occur to me that you don’t. That is so sad.”

“He, um—seems nice,” I offer.

“Greg? Definitely.” She nods. “He’s super nice. When I was little, he built me a wooden dollhouse for my birthday, with working lights and tiny hardwood floors and—you probably don’t know this, but we’re related. Of course, if you’re Greek and you live in Tarpon Springs you’re related to pretty much everybody, but your dad and my mom are cousins.”

I crush the pastry bag in my fist and stand. “I need to go.”

“Did I do something wrong?” Kat’s eyebrows pull together.

“No.”

“I know how hard this must—”

“You couldn’t possibly know how hard this is.” The words are hard. Sharp. And other, uglier words fill my mouth with a terrible taste. I am irrationally jealous because I’ve never had a dollhouse. Or a real birthday party. Or cousins. I am jealous that she spent her whole life knowing my father. I’m jealous of a dollhouse. “You don’t have even the slightest of clues.”

I make the mistake of looking back. Tears trickle down her cheeks and I am a monster girl. And the voice that came out of me was banshee shrill. I sounded like my mother.

“I shouldn’t have said that.” I sit down. The paper bag crackles as I pull out a napkin and offer it to Kat. “I’m sorry.”

“No.” She wipes her eyes, making a mess of her makeup. “You’re right. I have no right to assume I know anything about your life.”

Inexplicably, I want to like her. And maybe I want her to like me, too. “I didn’t have to be such a bitch about it.”

She gives a sniffly laugh. “You do have a point right there.”

I make air circles in front of my left eye. “You’re kind of … smeared.”

Kat digs her arm into a cavernous purse and produces a compact mirror. “Yeesh, you’re right. I’d better go do some repair work before the shop opens.” She gestures at a gift shop beside the river. It’s one of the larger shops, with a signboard out front offering sponge dive tours for fifteen dollars. “Do you, um—want to hang out sometime? Considering your narrowly averted Alex Kosta crisis, it’s clear you need someone to show you the ropes around here.”

I laugh. “Sure.”

“Theo is hiring at the gift shop,” she says. “I could put in a word, if you’re interested. I mean, he’s my uncle on the other side of the family, so you probably wouldn’t even need to fill out an application. What do you say?”

I’ve never had a job before, unless you consider Mom’s brief stint stocking newspaper boxes. We’d drive to the loading dock, fill up the trunk of the car—I think it was an old Ford Escort that time—with string-tied bundles of newspapers, and drive around town, swapping out yesterday’s edition with the current one. She had a hard time getting up before dawn, so most of the time I did the deliveries by myself, even though I didn’t have a driver’s license.

I don’t intend on staying in Tarpon Springs, but a job would be a better alternative to high school. Something to do. Something to occupy my brain until it’s time to leave. “I’ll think about it.”





“Phoebe can take you shopping for school clothes,” Greg says later, as we walk home from the cell-phone store. One of the things he’s shared about himself is that he’s an eco-friendly type who subscribes to the philosophy that if your destination is less than a mile away, you should walk. Something about reducing his carbon footprint, he said, but I wasn’t really listening. I was too busy trying to figure out how to tell him I have no intention of going to school. “Cell phones I can handle, but I am clueless when it comes to clothes.”

“I, um—I’m not going to school.”

I wasn’t anticipating the direct approach, and he looks at me as if I’ve sprouted a second head. I found his high school yearbook in the bookcase when I got home from the sponge docks. Greg played varsity football, captained the baseball team, and was the student-council treasurer. There’s also a plaque on the living-room wall that commemorates the year he was the Epiphany cross retriever. I have no idea what that means, but clearly Greg is the type of guy who loved high school. He’s a participator. I’m not surprised that my refusal doesn’t even make a blip on his radar screen. “I know it would be intimidating at fir—”