Star Daughter by Shveta Thakrar
Part One
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
—OSCAR WILDE
My mother is a star.
I am half—half of the earth, half of the heavens.
Cut me, and I might bleed silver. My skin is a rich brown, the exact shade of my human father’s skin, but my hair is long and thick and frosted like the moon. In my chest burns a fiery core that beats in time with the music of the spheres, their song deep and layered with dreams.
My mother is a star, one of many bright jewels who sing praises in the skies, who view us from on high. She chose to come down and make a life on Earth, but it wasn’t long before she yearned to go home. Nothing could truly hold her here—not my father’s proposal of marriage, not my birth into the world, not even our nightly dances together in the yard after devouring the dinner my father had cooked, when we’d flee the sink full of dishes to spin and turn, washed in the light of her family above. Our family.
She watches me now from her old throne, one more twinkle in the constellation Pushya, a figure as distant as the characters in the bedtime stories she once loved to tell me. In the evening, I see her clearly, laughing with her companions, radiant. Sometimes I catch rare glimpses of her during the day, when the sky is blue and everything is warm and golden, and it’s almost like having her with me again. Some nights, while the world slumbers, I raise my head to the coal-dark heavens and dream I can even speak to her.
Yet I can’t touch her anymore, can’t go with her to the park, can’t have her take me shopping or hug me or scold me or just be in the same room with me.
My mother is a star, so I can’t do any of those things. Not while she’s in the sky, and I’m down here.
It always felt like a betrayal, but there was something I didn’t see, because I’d been looking at all the wrong parts, all the shadows between the stars.
I didn’t yet know how to find our light.
—FROM SHEETAL’S JOURNAL
1
Sometimes keeping secrets was the hardest thing in the world.
Sheetal Mistry decided to make a break for it. Right past the mirrored walls that reflected one another until the swanky banquet hall expanded into infinity—a horribly overcrowded infinity made of noisy kids, successful aunties and uncles, and gossiping grandparents. Everyone watching, everyone talking and laughing.
She waded into the mob. All around her, gorgeous clothes shimmered in rich colors, ornate gold-and-gemstone jewelry glittered and gleamed, and a rainbow of syllables arced through the room. Without trying, she made out Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and English—the heart of New Jersey’s desi community, all under one huge roof.
Her cousin’s birthday party should have been beautiful, like a glamorous scene from a faerie novel. Instead, it was all too loud, too much. Maybe she could hide in the corridor. Minal would just have to forgive her for vanishing.
She’d taken exactly two steps toward the exit when the Bragging Brigade, a group of the most annoying aunties and uncles ever, descended like hawks on their quarry. “Hi, Sheetal,” said an engineer uncle who started every conversation with the exact same question. “How are your classes? Did you hear my Vaibhav got early admittance to Harvard?”
“And Bijal is a National Merit Scholar!” an oncologist auntie announced. “That will look so good on her college applications.”
Sheetal faked a grin. “That’s great.” Summer vacation had just started, so she didn’t have any classes, and anyway, this was all old news. Oh, why hadn’t she kept running?
The other uncle smiled at her. “Your studies are going well? Still planning on a physics major like your papa?”
Actually, clown college is looking better every day, Sheetal almost shot back. She nodded inanely instead.
“What about your extracurriculars?” Oncologist Auntie cut in. “Now that you’re a junior, have you thought about volunteering at the clinic like Bijal? You need to be well rounded these days.”
“Sorry, Auntie, I was on my way to the bathroom,” Sheetal mumbled. She could feel their judgment clinging to her as she slipped past, sticky as a spiderweb.
The kids they compared her to weren’t any better than their show-off parents. Vaibhav and Bijal had everything Sheetal didn’t, and they knew it. Even now, they held court with their followers at the other end of the banquet hall, snubbing her every time she walked by. They’d written her off years ago after Radhikafoi had caught her in the pool at a community party and dragged her away in front of everyone—chlorine and her hair dye didn’t mix, as her auntie had pointedly reminded her later—and she’d overheard them making fun of her more than once for being shy and boring.
Sheetal wasn’t shy. She definitely wasn’t boring. Of course, she could never show them the truth.
A soft, silvery melody pealed in her ears, stopping her where she stood. She shivered, the seductive tones caressing her spine and making her palms tingle. Her blood heated as something kindled at her core. If light had a voice, this would be it.
Starsong.
She already knew no one else could hear it, and not just because of the strident bass of the Bollywood hits pulsing through the restaurant like an erratic heartbeat. This was meant for her ears alone.