She Dims the Stars(10)

Me, fifteen years old, sitting at the lunch table, holding a drink in my right hand and clenching my left. I don’t exactly remember what I was looking at—probably nothing, because all I could think about was what Miranda had said about my hair before I had left the house. It was a dig, as usual. My self-esteem was in the shitter, and I’d started to count how long I could press my fingernails into my palm before it became unbearable, when I heard his voice through the haze surrounding my thoughts.

“Jesus, Byrdie. Do you not have a medium setting?”

Cline was leaning over the table, his ever fattening arms braced heavily on the wobbling fixture. I remember he was eating a candy bar and that his left front tooth was caked in chocolate.

The thick fog around my head seemed to settle over my eyes for a second, and I blinked it away, the soda can shaking a little as I turned to look straight at him. “What?”

He licked the food from his teeth and made a motion toward me, causing the rest of the people at our table to turn. “You’re either up here”—he raised his hand above his head—“or down here.” He pretended to bend down and place his palm on the floor. “Are you never just … normal? The f*ck is wrong with you anymore?”

I don’t know if it’s because he finally noticed and called me out, or what it was, but having all those eyes on me as he said it sent a flood of panic, unlike anything I’d ever experienced in my life, rushing up through my sternum and into my esophagus. Tears sprang to my eyes, and my throat began to close. I swear, to this day, I could hear my heart beating inside my own ears, and instead of giving a sarcastic comeback, instead of telling him to go to hell and throwing food at him, I stood up really fast and ran out of the cafeteria, in tears.

The entire walk home, I practiced what I was going to say. I had questions and I needed my dad. I wanted to sit down face to face and ask him everything I’d ever wanted to know. I no longer cared if it hurt him to answer. Memories of my mom shouldn’t have been things kept hidden and placed in dark boxes in my grandmother’s house. I should have been able to know her. But I knew nothing. She was kind and sweet and had died too soon. These are the only things I had been told, and I mostly knew them because Cline’s mom would tell me anytime I got the nerve to ask.

I’d had an entire conversation with my father in my head by the time I reached my front door, sweating and trembling with anticipation of what was to come. Patrick Byrd worked from home, but Miranda did not, so imagine my surprise when I heard them arguing in the living room as I walked into the foyer. I wanted to call out and let them know I was home. Wanted to announce my presence somehow. But the yelling rendered me mute.

“I can’t have this conversation again, Miranda. You knew coming into this marriage that there would be no children.”

Her voice was shrill and hateful in response. “No one in this town knows that you’re sterile. We can use a surrogate.”

“No.”

There was a shuffling sound like something was being pushed. Maybe the couch. Maybe Patrick. I can’t be sure, because my eyes were squeezed tight.

“You haven’t had a problem raising another man’s child for the last fifteen years. Why would it be an issue now?”

That darkness, that feeling of desperation I’d been fighting for so long, hit me in the chest like a physical blow, and it took every last ounce of strength in my body not to hit the floor in a crumpled heap.

I’m not proud of what happened after, but that was the day Byrdie ceased to exist.

Or, at least, it was the day I tried to make her disappear.





It feels like all the air in the room has been sucked out with a vacuum. Cline is staring at Audrey with the most intense expression, and I’m trying to decipher if it’s betrayal or disappointment. Like what she’s just divulged came out of her so easily. She’s just admitted to having one of the saddest origins I’ve ever heard of, and yet she’s standing here, holding my hand and shaking it like we’re making a business wager of some kind.

“Is that not tragic enough for you?” Her head leans a little to the left as she lets go of my palm. “There’s more, if you need it. But I’d like to make a request for my character.”

“Sure.” It’s really all I can offer at this point.

“I want my girl to ride a unicorn. And I want the unicorn to shit rainbow cookies as a defense.”

The mental picture of Audrey atop a unicorn as it drops rainbow-colored cookie bombs breaks whatever heaviness there was in the room mere seconds ago, and I let out an awkward laugh that’s a cross between a choke and a hyena bark.

“I’m serious. Cookie-shitting unicorn or nothing, Elliot.” Her smile is shaky, but her voice is strong, and it does not go unnoticed by Cline.

“Are you being serious right now?” He is bracing himself against the counter, his full attention on the girl staring back at him with a blank expression.

“Yeah. If I’m gonna be in a video game, I want some artistic license. I have no idea what he was planning to do with the character of the ex, but I’m sure it wasn’t half as bad ass as—“

“Shut up.” He slams his fist down and steps toward her, making her take one back. “Just, shut up. Why are you even here? It’s been, like, six years since you’ve even spoken to me after you ran away, or whatever, and now you’re in my place and hanging out with my best friend. You're gonna ride a unicorn in his game?”