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I went to Little Boulder Academy, too. So did Lucas and Bishop. Most of the people in our circle attended the prestigious private elementary school. I try thinking back, searching distant memories for any of a dark-haired little pest. How could a girl as poor as her afford the tuition of the private school?
I always thought the trash spawned her into existence, low class through and through. Blair has always been the girl from the dirt who somehow managed to earn a scholarship to Silver Lake High. I never considered our paths might have crossed before high school.
Plucking the memo from the file, I read it with pinched brows.
Macy Davis called to inform the school that Blair will withdraw from Little Boulder Academy due to a change in financial circumstances. The transfer will go through next month. Macy expressed concern for Blair’s reaction to her father’s desertion and disappearance from his family. Please inform all of Blair’s teachers of this change and keep an eye on her while she remains a student at Little Boulder Academy.
My heart pounds harder as my eyes fly over the words. I don’t realize I’ve wrinkled the note from my clenched grip until the paper crinkles. Inhaling, I smooth the creases while I try to calm my pulse.
The unwelcome sympathy seeps back into my bones. I want to dig into the marrow and cut it out. I don’t like feeling this way about Blair Davis. The heavy ache inside me expands in my chest like a balloon.
I rub my eyes and push my hand into my hair. Grudging understanding sparks to life. Her dad left her and I know what that feels like.
I blow out a breath, shaking my head.
As I put the memo back in the file, an exit interview from the counselor catches my attention. A little girl’s handwriting fills the page in big, blocky print. Stars dot the I’s.
Squinting, I draw it closer, crouching to kneel rigidly over the open file. I recognize this handwriting. Blair’s name is at the bottom with the same star punctuating the letter in her name.
You look sad. Don’t be sad. Here, wish on my star.
The soft, high-pitched voice echoes in my head along with a flash of long dark hair and brown eyes. My throat is thick when I swallow. The memory of my third grade art class assaults me in snippets, skipping like a broken movie reel.
There was a girl my age, both of us older than the other kids but too young to join the grade ahead of us. She came up to me during arts and crafts to show me her drawing of stars. They filled the page, lopsided and quirky, just like her smile.
I had been shirking the teacher’s directions to draw because I was sulking. Everything sucked and I wasn’t getting my way. Mom and Dad kept leaving me alone. I didn’t like the lady staying at my house. She didn’t know the book I liked to read with Mom.
The little girl didn’t mind or notice the way everyone kept their distance from me, taking the chair next to me without asking. I glared at her, but she ignored that, too.
You can have my stars, they’ll make you happy again. Make a wish! The wishes you make on shooting stars always come true.
I couldn’t yell at her to leave me alone. Instead, I remained quiet and surly, pinching the edges of her drawing while she started on a new page. At the bottom of the page she wrote her name, Blair with a small star over one letter. A look of concentration settled on her face, tongue poking out between her teeth as she drew. Two pages filled with crooked stars and her random bouts of humming later, the anger making me shout at everyone bled away, leaving me calmer.
Suspicious, I asked her, “How do you know the wishes work? Have you tried it?”
Blair had blown out a gusty breath that moved her hair. “No,” she said with a pout, pausing from drawing. “Mom says they come out after my bedtime, but she swears it’s like magic! Magic is awesome!”
Her eyes had grown so big and were full of such sincerity, I had to believe she was right.
I clung to her words like a lifeline after all the anger, pain, and frustration I felt from my parents noticing me less and less as they stayed away from home for longer stretches. I don’t know what I did to make them not want to be around me, but the hurt was suffocating. Blair’s promise about wishing on shooting stars helped. I looked for one every night before bed, staying up until my eyes were dry and itchy. When I saw one, I was going to tell her about it, eager to boast that I had wished on a real one before she did.
Blair sat beside me in every art class, talkative enough for the both of us. Her enthusiasm was contagious. She made me laugh, struck with a spark of life again after I’d felt numb to the world.
Then she was gone.
Like my parents.
No one wanted to stay with me.
Her chair remained empty and the tingling numbness crept back in without her smiles to fight it back. The teacher told me she had to go away when I asked where my friend went.
It wasn’t until after Blair was gone that I finally saw my first real shooting star.
For my first wish, I wished for her to come back. I was mad that she could leave me behind so easily.
Well, I wished for Blair once, and she did return to me. Only it was far too late. I was already broken beyond the repair of her magic shooting stars by the time I found her again.
The quirky friend from my childhood is my little thief. I can’t believe it.
