The Chaos of Stars

  Ry’s face lights up, and we walk in companionable brain freeze along the harbor toward where he parked a few blocks away.

  “Oh, hey!” He stops and pulls out his phone, then stands next to me and holds it away from us. “Stick out your tongue.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Taking our picture!”

  “Why?”

  “Clearly you are not on Facebook. This is what teenagers are supposed to do. We take pictures of ourselves.”

  “That’s . . . fun?”

  He laughs. “Just stick out your tongue.”

  Raising an eyebrow suspiciously at him, I do as I’m told, to see that my tongue is an unnatural shade of blue. He leans into me holding the camera out at arm’s length and takes a picture of us sticking out our flavored-sugar tongues. He brings it back and shows me the picture and . . .

  I look so happy. It’s almost startling; I haven’t seen many pictures of myself recently, but in the ones I have seen, I look . . . ah, floods, Tyler’s right. I usually look angry. And if I look happy in this picture, Ry looks like a constellation of joy.

  “Want me to send it to you?” he asks, and I nod. He taps fluidly on his phone and I take the opportunity to walk a couple steps away from where our shoulders were brushing. “Oh, hey, that’s right. Tyler wants to do movies tonight.” He looks up expectantly, and his face is so open and happy that it hurts.

  I spend a lot of time being angry. It’s making me tired. I want to look happy like Ry all the time. “I’ll be there.”

  “Great! I didn’t tell you, my mom had the room entirely redone based on your advice. I wrote down everything you said. She thought it was brilliant. So you get to come and see the fruits of your genius.”

  “Did you do the popcorn machine?”

  “First thing that went in.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of being anywhere else.”

  And that’s how, three hours later, I find myself snuggled into a couch in the dark in a room I designed, perfectly happy.

  And that’s how, three hours and fifteen minutes later, I feel Ry’s hand slip into mine.

  For that single second before I pull my hand away, before my brain and will and resolve kick in, it’s like magic. Real magic, not the stupid blessed-amulet kind, not the using-the-right-words-that-Isadora-can-never-know kind, but electricity and butterflies and a feeling of everything in the universe suddenly lining up exactly so and opening up an entirely new way to see, to do, to be.

  I yank my hand away. It’s too much. I can’t—I can’t feel this. I can’t do this. I stand and flee the room before he can finish saying my name, run out of his house, start the long walk home with tears in my eyes.

  Butterflies are stupid, fragile things that have beautiful and tragically short lives. Electricity kills people. I don’t need a new person to suddenly spring up under my skin and push out who I was, who I’ve already decided to be. Those feelings have no place in my life and I will not let myself be a fool in love, with love, let it take over and destroy me.

  Love isn’t magic. Just like my family, just like my place in the universe, it’s something that I can’t keep, can’t make last.

  I would rather lose Ry before I ever have him.

  I stand in front of the mural, glaring at the image of my mother leaning over my father’s dead body as she lovingly puts all of the pieces of him back together so that he can be given life again.

  “Isadora,” she says behind me, but I don’t turn. I won’t. She keeps trying to talk to me, trying to explain, but I won’t let her. I don’t want to hear her pretend like she loves me, pretend like I am anything other than her clever solution to the problem of no more worshippers.

  “Isadora,” she says, and this time her voice is hard and sharp, making a headache blossom behind my right eye. Still I don’t turn, so she walks around, putting herself between the mural and me.

  “Please,” she says, and the tone in her voice is something I’ve never heard. I’ve heard her be gentle and sweet, but she sounds almost . . . desperate. “Please talk to me. Please let me help you.”

  I take a step back, narrowing my eyes, and fold my arms across my chest. “I can’t stop you from talking. But I never have to listen to you again.”

  Rage blazes in her eyes, but is quickly snuffed out by something deeper and sadder, something that, for a fraction of a second, makes me want to step forward and wrap my arms around her in a hug. Comfort her.

  No. Why would I comfort her? I take another step back.

  That’s when I notice that the mural behind her has turned black. The history of my parents, the triumph of my mother—it’s all gone, swallowed up in darkness. A figure blacker than the black looms up behind Isis, holds out arms, and wraps them around her in the way that I wouldn’t.

  It pulls her into the darkness, and I watch.

  I just watch, too scared to move.

  I do nothing.

  Chapter 10

  Amun-Re, sitting at the head of the court of the gods, could not make a decision between Set and Horus. They fought bitterly for eighty years, with little ground gained. Gods took sides, but neither Set nor Horus was the clear winner of the throne.

  Isis, well-known for her maternal zeal, had been barred from the proceedings. So she disguised herself as an old widow and asked for shelter in Set’s home. Spinning a tale of woe for him, she spoke of her son’s wrongful treatment at the hands of a usurper who stole his inheritance. Set, enraged, declared that such behavior was wrong.

  He did it in front of the court of the gods, unwittingly condemning himself.

  Clearly he hadn’t yet learned the lesson I knew from the day I could walk: my mother wins every argument.

  “DON’T YOU THINK HE’S HOT?”

  “I don’t care if he’s hot.”

  Tyler smiles smugly at me. “So you do think he’s hot, you just don’t let that influence you.”

  “I am holding a nail gun. Do you really want to keep up this conversation?”

  She raises her hands in surrender. “We will continue when you are unarmed.”

  I glare, turning back to the plywood bracing frames I’m nailing to the wall. The most important parts of design are the ones people never see, and since we finally got approval, I’ve spent the past two nights awake calculating and recalculating and sketching and graphing.

  Plus, no sleep means no dreams. No dreams means no worries. I am letting this room consume me and push out thoughts of everything else.

  Including inky blackness swallowing my tragic past every night in my dreams.

  Including sugar-colored tongues and easy laughter and blue eyes and Ry.

  Especially Ry.

  He knew. He knew how I felt about relationships, that I just wanted to be friends. And that’s the worst part—I did want to be friends. More than I even realized until he blew it and we couldn’t be friends anymore, and I actually miss him. But he ruined everything. He knew, and he ruined it anyway.

  “Whoa, Isadora, the board is officially nailed.” Michelle eyes my work with raised eyebrows. Okay. Maybe someone else should be in charge of the nail gun today. But it’s so satisfying.

  “I’ve been texting you all morning,” she says. Even though she’s been right down the stairs the whole time.

  “My phone’s dead.” No phone, no infuriatingly chipper texts and messages from Ry asking to meet so he can explain. Phones let people be both lazy and intrusive. Really, they’re a terrible invention. We should go back to messengers. Or smoke signals. Way easier to ignore.

  “How close are we?” She surveys the room with a concerned look. Rightly so. I’m getting a little nervous about brashly declaring I could do this. I want to prove myself to her (and to me) so very badly. This is the biggest project I’ve ever undertaken, and I need it to work. I need to show I can do more than color schemes and furniture.

  But with the approval delay, we had to start on the framework without blueprints, so until yesterday my prep was pretty much
pointless. Once Michelle got me the room’s actual schematics, I had to compensate with extra bracings because there weren’t enough studs in the drywall to support the weight of the plywood sheets and drop ceilings.

  The only one happy about this situation is Tyler, with her infinite supply of “If only we had more studs!” jokes. I set down the nail gun and, not even sure what I’m doing, wrap an arm around her side in some sort of approximation of a hug. “I’m glad you’re here,” I say. She’s keeping me sane.

  “Of course you are,” she answers, hugging me back. “I just wish I were—”

  “If you say ‘studlier,’ I’m kicking you out.”

  She laughs, and I go back to nailing. Opening night is in a week. Already announced to the papers, already sent out in the newsletter in fancy, glossy, full-color glory. Which means I have two days, max, to finish the framing—easily a week’s worth of work—and then four days for drilling the star maps I’ve already marked on the plywood, painting, wiring, installing, and finessing.

  Leaving me only one day—the day of the evening gala—to clean and get the actual exhibits set up.

  It’s impossible.

  I will make it happen or die trying.

  I don’t realize I’ve said that last part aloud until I notice Michelle’s horrified face. “We could use some help,” Tyler says from the finished section where she’s touching up the cement floor’s black coat of paint.

  “Not just anyone,” I say. “You pull in, say, Lindsey from the front desk, and it’ll take more time to explain what needs to done than it would for me to do it all myself.”

  “So we could use some capable help,” Tyler amends.

  Michelle bites her lip. “With the cost of the storage and extra security, we don’t really have the budget for—”

  “I can do this. Tyler is enough.”

  “What time did you get here this morning?” Michelle asks.

  “Five,” I say. Lie: I’ve been here since 3:30. After the attempted robbery, security confiscated keys from everyone other than Michelle, but she gave me the only employee-held copy so I could drop off supplies and work whenever.

  “It’s four thirty. Have you taken a break?”

  “I can’t.” I turn back to the wall and line up the gun with a new board. But when I pull the trigger, nothing happens. I pull it again and again. “Floods, what is—”

  Michelle stands next to me, dangling the unplugged cord. “Lunch. Now. If you come back one minute before six thirty p.m., I will have security deny you entrance.”

  My mouth gapes open wider than a hippo’s, but every line in Michelle’s small body is rigid and unyielding. I could pick her up and deposit her outside this room, then lock the door . . . but I wouldn’t put it past her to call security. “Fine,” I snap. “I need to deliver paint samples to the guys doing the display stands, anyway.”

  “I’m going to smell your breath when you get back and I had better smell food!”

  “That’s disgusting!”

  “I don’t care!”

  Tyler straightens and drops her roller.

  “You”— I jab one long finger, the black polish sadly chipped, in her direction—“already ate lunch. Keep working.”

  My boots crack like a gunshot with each echoing stomp down the stairs and through the mostly empty museum. At the bottom I feel someone staring at me and whip around, ready to catch Tyler trying to skip out, but her angular frame is nowhere to be seen among the small group passing in a blur at the top of the stairs.

  A strange smell dries and pricks at the back of my mouth; I can’t place it, but it doesn’t belong. It reminds me of the break-in at Sirus’s house, which makes no sense because there isn’t any salt breeze here.

  I fight the odd urge to shudder, and stalk out of the museum instead. I can run three errands in two hours if I literally run.

  Laden with bags, I drain the last of my Coke. I had three of them instead of anything to eat. It was faster and I couldn’t get that dry sensation out of my mouth. Besides, Michelle’d have to stand on a stepladder to smell my breath, so I think I’m okay. Except it’s 6:24 p.m., and I’m hovering outside the taped-up DO NOT ENTER signs blocking the wing-in-progress. She can’t get mad at six minutes early. The plastic handles of the bags are threatening to tear and burning where they dig into my exposed forearms.

  I duck under the rope as a ringing laugh echoes from behind the closed double doors, and a warm feeling instinctively rushes through me.

  Then I realize who the laugh belongs to.

  “Amun-Re, I’ll kill him,” I growl, kicking the doors open. Tyler doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed of herself; she’s sitting in the corner on the floor, reading something out loud off her phone. Ry laughs again, not looking up from where he is paging through the plans. My plans. For my room.

  I let off a stream of the foulest cursing I can think of, the Croatian rolling off my tongue as it usually does in times like these. “Get your hands off of my papers,” I snap when I finally run out of names to call him. His smile has dropped away, and underneath his olive skin the blood has drained from his face.

  Tyler’s eyes are wide, but she still looks like she’s enjoying everything. “Was that Arabic?”

  “No, it was Elvish. What is he doing here?”

  Ry shakes his head, as though coming out of a fog. “I’m helping.”

  “You are not—” My mouth freezes as I look around the skeleton of the room. Three-fourths of the bracings are up, perfectly placed. It is precision, quality work. When I left two hours ago, only a third of them were done, and I had been working since 3:30 a.m.

  Oh, no.

  “But . . . Michelle said they have no budget for help,” I stutter.

  “Volunteering,” he says with that brilliant, dimpled smile. “Looks great on college applications.”

  “How did you—?” I put my hand against one of the bracings.

  “Theater tech crew since middle school. I’ve built dozens of sets. Plus my dad is an artisan. I’m best with metal, but I should be able to handle all this work and the wiring.”

  The wiring. That’s been my biggest concern from the beginning. I’ve never handled wiring in any of my designs, and even though I know how I want it to work, I’ve been sort of hoping that somehow it will work on its own. The special-ordered lights and equipment are sitting, perfectly boxed, stacked against the wall in my room at Sirus’s house. I can’t even look at them without feeling sick.

  If the lights aren’t perfect, there is no point to this room. If I blow this room, I prove to Michelle (and myself) that I can’t handle big projects.

  “You really think you can do the lights?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  I close my eyes and put a hand over my aching forehead. I don’t want him here. He makes things weird and complicated and I hate that I have his face memorized, that I can recall exactly how his hand felt slipping into mine.

  Because the worst part, the real reason I haven’t let him call me, the real reason I am now terrified of him?

  Part of me wonders how bad it would have been to let myself feel what I wanted to feel, and see where things went with letting him hold my hand.

  I can’t do that. I can’t set myself up for loss. I can’t want something that can never be lasting or real.

  But this room is real, and, chaos take me, I need him.

  “I own you,” I say.

  Ry’s dark eyebrows rise in a silent question.

  “For the next week you have no life outside of this room. I own your time, your brain, and especially your truck. You do exactly what I tell you to do without question. This is my room and you are only here as long as I want you to be. Understand?”

  Ry nods, his smile sloppy with happiness that has no reason to be there.

  “Good thing Scott isn’t here,” Tyler says, still texting. “He’d be totally hot for you after that speech.”

  “You.” I point at her and she looks up, her express
ion exhausted. I soften my own and smile at her. “Go get food for everyone, because we’re all going to be here for a long time tonight. Take my card, and take your time.”

  “Sir, yes, sir!” Tyler jumps up, mock-saluting. “I love it when you get bossy. It’s kind of adorable.” She rummages through my bag for my wallet and runs.

  I take a deep breath and grab the next bracing. Ry is instantly at my side, helping me move it into place. His movements are strong and assured; Tyler and I fumbled through this together, neither of us particularly skilled. He holds the awkwardly long two-by-four in place while I position the nail gun.

  He waits to start talking until I’m in a rhythm. “So.” Thunk. “About the other night.” Thunk. “I got the feeling—and correct me if I’m wrong because I don’t speak Girl, though I’ve tried desperately to learn it—that you were”—thunk—“a little upset.” Thunkthunkthunkthunk.

  “You’re at least remedial level in Girl,” I say through gritted teeth.

  “What did I do?”

  I turn to glare at him. He ruined everything, that’s what he did! “What part of ‘just friends’ didn’t you get?”

  His smile is a masterpiece, a da Vinci study in innocence. But his blue, blue eyes spark with something else. “Friends hold hands.”

  “Oh, do they?”

  “All the time.”

  “So you hold hands with Scott a lot, then.”

  “Had to quit. Sweaty palms.”

  “Tyler?”

  “Too bony. Brought up childhood nightmares of dancing skeletons.”

  “Any other friends I don’t know who you regularly clasp digits with in this apparently very normal aspect of friendship?”

  “No, not really.”

  “So by ‘friends’ and ‘all the time,’ you mean ‘no one’ and ‘never.’”