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Wishing…
I wish, I wish, I wish?—
CHAPTER THREE
“They’re dead, kid.”
“What?”
He juts his chin at the sky. “The stars.”
He clasps my shoulder, crouching down, and points a finger roughly up at the heavens. Something sickly sweet and bitter hits my nose when the breath puffs out of him like smoke, and I wrinkle it, craning my head back. He doesn’t seem to notice. Or he doesn’t care.
“Those twinklin’ lights?” I follow his gloved finger. “That’s from billions and billions of years ago. They’re so bright, because what you’re seeing is them exploding. Dying. We’re so far away, it’s only reachin’ us now. We’re just seeing the…echo.” He nods, barking a short laugh like what he’s saying is a joke.
I blink a couple times, not understanding. “But…”
“But what?”
“Momma said?—”
He snorts, and I get another big sniff of his breath. I hunch my shoulders, trying to lean away, but he won’t let me. I don’t like it when he smells like this, and he’s been smellin’ like this a lot. It’s sour and sweet, like the rusty spots on his truck that always makes my fingers smell funny after I scratch at it.
And it makes him…weird.
I don’t know how to explain it.
I just don’t wanna be here.
I want my real dad, the one who smells like smoke and beer and gasoline, and doesn’t joke about sad things.
“Mason… your momma… she’s got a good heart,” he tells me, his words hitching and running together, “but I’d be careful about… listenin’ to her.” He wags a finger in my face, then burps. “She don’t know shit.”
My frown deepens.
“Come on…” he says, steering me back toward the house. “It’s cold as fuck out here.”
I look over my shoulder, staring up at the glittering lights in the sky. It’s started to snow—big, fat flakes floating down. And I hear Momma’s voice in my head from so long ago, I can’t even remember when it was she told me. Last summer maybe?
“The stars are angels,” she’d said, fingers running through my hair as she pointed up at the twinklin’ sky. “It’s why we make wishes on them. God sent them to light up the scary dark, and watch over us, hear our prayers, our dreams…”
Later on, as I lay in my bed, headphones covering my ears, my new CD Momma got me for my birthday playing—Pearl Jam, the band’s called—my night light projector painting blue galaxies across my ceiling and walls, all I can think is?—
If the stars are dead…
Where are the angels?
AGE 6, AUGUST
We move to a place called Shiloh, like the beagle in the movies.
I always wanted one. I used to ask the stars—the angels—but that was before I found out the truth. I don’t tell them or ask them for anything now.
Pennsylvania looks about the same as New York—not like the city where we visited last Christmas, but more like where we lived, just outside of Buffalo, with trees and fields and winding back roads. And cold, snowy winters that would bury us in our house.
I wasn’t happy about this—the move. I’m not happy about a lot of things these days.
But according to the pictures on the map Momma showed me, Pennsylvania is right next to New York. Where we live now, and where we lived there, not even a whole ruler away from each other.
