The Same Stuff as Stars

“Now, you go to the house and pack whatever little things you need to take along and then come right back. My buddy promised he’d be here round midnight, and best I can make out”—he was holding his wrist up, trying to see his watch—“it’s past eleven already.”

Her

teeth were chattering, and her legs wobbled so much she could hardly make it to the kitchen door. She stole into the house and up the stairs. Yanking the green suitcase out from under the bed, she threw it on top of the quilt. There was no way her hands could work well enough to fold her clothes. She just grabbed them out of the drawer, stuffed them in the bag, and shakily pulled the zipper. Then she crept back downstairs, closing the kitchen door behind her as quietly as she could. Everything about her was shaking except her mind, which felt like her mouth had that time the dentist at the clinic punched it with a huge shot of Novocain.

He was standing just inside the sugar shack door when she opened it. “You came,” he said, drawing her in and closing the door behind her. “I was afraid you wouldn’t.”

She nodded in the darkness. This is what she’d wished for, wasn’t it? That he’d never leave her again?

He sat down against the encyclopedia shelves. “We’ll show old Verna, won’t we?” he said.

What did Verna have to do with it? “I don’t understand.”

“She took my boy, but she ain’t getting my angel girl.”

What did he mean? That she was only something to be kept from Verna, like some piece of property he didn’t want stolen?

“Yeah, soon as they let me out this morning, I knowed it was my one and only chance. I’m going to take you so far away she’ll never see you again. How about Florida? Would Florida suit you, baby?”

Florida? What was he talking about? Even if he really was on parole, he couldn’t go running around wherever he pleased. Angel knew enough about the system to know that. “They won’t let you go to Florida without permission, will they?”

“Hell, they won’t even let you go to the bathroom without permission, but you don’t have to worry about that, baby. Your daddy is doing the worrying from here on out.”

“Daddy?”

“Yeah, angel girl?”

“I forgot my bear. I need to go back and get my bear.”

“You got a thing about that bear I give you, don’t ya? Sure, go get your bear, baby, just hurry, okay? He’ll be here before long.” She started for the door. “And Angel, if the old witch has any cash, better bring that, too.”

“All she’s got is her Social Security, Daddy. You can’t take that.”

“Hell, she owes me a lot more than that for all the crap I took off her.”

Angel couldn’t move. He wanted her to steal from Grandma.

“Go on, baby, we ain’t got much time.”

She left, pulling the door shut behind her, but instead of going into the kitchen door, she turned, making a wide circle toward the back fence, and then ran like the devil was at her heels to the trailer. The star man’s car was still missing, but maybe—yes, the door wasn’t locked. People didn’t seem to bother locking doors out here in the country, though they ought to—you didn’t know who might turn up. She flopped down on a couch under the window and sat there panting until she got her breath under control. Then she waited.

Finally, she heard the sound of a car coughing up the dirt road and saw the lights as they swept left into Grandma’s driveway. Wayne came out of the sugar shack. She couldn’t hear what he was saying to the driver, but by the moon’s light she could see him beside the driver-side window, his head bobbing up and down in agitation and then swiveling toward the house as if looking for someone. At one point he picked up some gravel out of the driveway and flung it at one of the upstairs windows. That’s the wrong window, Daddy. That’s Verna’s room. At last he walked around and got into the passenger seat and slammed the door and the car drove off. He never even looked in the direction of the trailer. As the car backed down to the road, she could just make out the shape of her suitcase standing by itself in the middle of the driveway, where Wayne had left it.

When the sound of the motor died away, she sat, like somebody frozen. He had come to get her, and she’d run away from him. Little Miss Obey All the Rules. That’s what happened to people who always obeyed. Life went whizzing by, and they just sat there cold and lonely like the ice in the South Pole. She didn’t have any tears. A real daughter would have cried for her daddy, who was leaving her and running away to Florida and probably ruining his life.

It was almost morning before she made herself get up from the couch to go to her own bed. The star man’s things were all around her—his books, his telescope, even the smell of him. Where had he run to? She would have gone with him if he had asked her to. No, how could she have thought that she could leave Grandma? Someone had to be her Polaris.

***

She crept back into the house, but she couldn’t sleep. Her brain was like a little car on a giant amusement park ride, going up and down and round and round, upside down and flinging her from one side to the other, making her want to vomit. She would have screeched out loud if she hadn’t been afraid that Grandma would hear.

The next day she got through school, grateful that the numbness was back in charge of her brain. She spoke to no one at school. She didn’t even stop to see Miss Liza when she went to the store. She hardly spoke to Grandma that evening. They ate a silent supper, and when the phone shrilled, they both jumped in their seats. They sat transfixed, listening to the phone scream, watching it vibrating on the wall.

“Well,” Grandma said after the seventh ring, “you’d better get it. It might be Bernie.”

Angel forced herself up from the chair, walked to the phone, and lifted the receiver, not daring to hope it was Bernie, and praying it wasn’t the police or social services. It was a stranger, asking for Mrs. Morgan. Female strangers meant social services.

“They want you.” Angel turned to Grandma, breathing hard.