She Dims the Stars(19)

Her stare is unwavering as she chews on her lip. “And Cline. Unless you plan to leave him here.”

It deflates the situation a little bit, but I don’t care. “And Cline. It’ll be fun. Let’s go where your mom went. We’ll start with tonight. Are you in?”

Her hand slips into mine, and it’s the only answer I need.



“We’re gonna get caught and go to jail and die.” Cline is whispering from the backseat like we’re on a stakeout.

“You can speak in a normal voice. We’re inside the car.” Audrey is pretending not to be nervous, but the waver in her voice belies her false bravado. “Also, that’s not how it works. You don’t just go to jail and die. If anything, it would be a holding cell and your mom would have to come bail you out. You’d pee in front of a few guys. Like on TV.”

“That’s how I would die. I’d hold my pee until it retracted back into my body and I died of sepsis.” Cline hisses the last s at her.

It’s nearly midnight, and we’ve seen a couple patrol cars ride by as well as a local with a flashlight looking for crap left on the beach. But I’m bound and determined to do this simply because it almost feels like we can’t stop now. I didn’t drive all the way to Alabama to get my dad’s old camping gear and then into North Carolina to steal books from an old lady’s house just to stop now.

We wait another fifteen minutes, and once we’re sure everything is clear, I make a motion with my fingers in the dark. Audrey leans over the console and slaps my hand.

“The hell are you doing? This isn’t some kind of Black Ops mission. Plus, the sleeping bags are in the back, so we have to open the car doors and stuff.”

“For once I agree with her. Don’t be a douche.” Cline reaches behind him and wrestles with a sleeping bag before sliding it forward and pushing it between the seats. “Here. Wait. Are there only two bags?”

I look over my shoulder at him and raise my hands in question. “Did you not bring one? What did you pack?”

“I packed clothes! And snacks. A phone charger. My pillow. I thought we’d be sleeping in the car or a hotel or something. Don’t give me that look, Elliot. I wasn’t exactly invited.”

“Then you don’t exactly have a sleeping bag,” I counter.

Audrey sighs and rubs her face with her hands. “He can have mine.”

“What are you going to sleep in?” I’m all for chivalry, but I was kind of counting on having something to sleep in tonight, and I’m sure Cline won’t reject her offer which means I’ll give her mine and be left without.

She grins in the darkness. “Jet pack time in a sleeping bag?”

My mouth drops open, and I slide away from her to the car door. “What kind of heathen do you think I am?”

“We brought an extra blanket. Relax. I’ll give you space. Jeez.” The look in her eyes tells me she’s lying.

Cline opens the door and starts to scoot outside. “I don’t even want to know what kind of weird-ass code that is.”

We all meet at the front of the car and wait to see if anyone is around. When I’m sure the coast is clear, I whisper for them to run, and we all take off at the same time, headed straight for the dunes, white sand spraying up around our feet as we dash toward a dip in the beach. The light doesn’t shine as bright there, and a fence blocks the area off just enough that if we’re sleeping on the ground, it would be hard for anyone to see us.

Breathing heavy and laughing quietly, we slip off our shoes and unroll the sleeping bags. Cline is in his quickly while Audrey and I unzip ours and open it to flatten it out on the moonlit sand. She lets the blanket unfurl, and the wind from the ocean makes it fly out of her hand, so I catch it and bring it back, settling it over us as we lay on our backs beneath the stars.

She stares up at the sky, her chin jutting out from the edge of the blanket and her eyes reflecting the clear constellations above. I wonder for a moment what she’s thinking. If she’s glad that she’s here. If I made the right choice. When her hand finds mine between us and she smiles as she closes her eyes, I have to believe that she’s thinking about her mom and that I did the right thing after all.





I can’t sleep at all lying between Elliot and Cline on the beach under the same stars my mom once slept beneath. My mind races, and my chest is heavy with so many questions that I can’t calm myself down enough to even allow a minutes’ worth of rest. The moment I close my eyes, I’m assaulted with things I’ve done wrong or something I’ve said that I shouldn’t have. Year’s of anxiety plague me in the darkness. Miranda’s face flashes between childhood memories that I once held sacred, and they become marred with her presence even though she wasn’t there.

My thoughts turn to her and her increasing hatred of me throughout the years. I wonder exactly when she was told about Patrick not being my father. I wonder what the precise moment was when she stopped hating me for having his attention and started loathing me for being born at all. Her transition from cold step-mother to functioning alcoholic, pill-popping antagonizer didn’t happen overnight. It was gradual.

Her girls' nights out became more often, bleeding into weekdays. She’d find any excuse to take a pill. Burn her finger on the stove? Pop an OxyContin. Headache from the night before? Take a Vicodin. She had multiple doctors and multiple prescriptions, a mini pharmacy in her bathroom that Patrick overlooked for one reason or another. Lorcet, Percocet, Demerol, and I think one time I found a bottle of Adderall stashed away in there. When she was prescribed the Xanax on top of all of that is when things started to really get bad.