When Stars Come Out (When Stars Come Out 1)

“You can work on unpacking your room before dinner,” she says.

“Are you sure? I can help with dinner,” I offer. Mom and I enjoy cooking, especially together.

She shakes her head. “You need an organized place to study. I’ll work on dinner.”

I don’t need to be told again. Besides, I want to be by myself for a little while. I head upstairs to my room. It is larger than the last one. A bay window overlooks the front lawn, and lets in a lot of light, and two built-in bookshelves flank either side of it. I turn up my music and start unpacking and shelving books.

After, I move to folding and hanging clothes, not that it is necessary. Coming to Nacoma Knight Academy means committing myself to a colorless life of navy skirts and white shirts—just another way to drown the old me. I use the process to mourn some of my favorite clothes—colorful dresses, comfy sweaters, geek t-shirts and skinny jeans that will mostly see weekend outings. The only clothing items I held onto from before are my tights.

The next box is the only one I labeled—Poppa. It’s full of his stargazing equipment: a set of astronomy binoculars, several posters of the night sky, and a cheap telescope my poppa gave me for my tenth birthday. He had a bigger, fancier version, but Mom sold it for money for the move to Oklahoma.

My eyes burn with unshed tears as I remove everything from the box and arrange it around my room. Before we came here, I was torn between research fields: astrophysics or engineering. Did I want to discover planets and stars or orbit the Earth?

But something happened the day Poppa died, and I put my dreams on hold, and ever since then, things have been falling apart.

The last item in this box doesn’t belong to Poppa. It’s a wood chest full of coins like the one I created today. I don’t make a habit of turning every soul I meet into a piece of hard

metal, just the ones who scare me. It’s not something I can really control.

The first soul I captured was my poppa. It was a knee-jerk reaction. I found him just as he died and a plume of black exploded from his body, tangled with his soul. I had never seen anything like it. The fear made the thread burst to life, and the next thing I knew, my poppa’s soul was just a coin on the ground, and the black thing zipped away.

I have yet to figure out what that black thing was, but it felt horrible, like a burden too great to bear.

His coin is the only one that doesn’t go in the box. I wear him on a chain around my neck, close to my heart.

I move to the other side of my bed and sit on the floor, slipping my hand into the mesh pocket where I placed the coin I created earlier in the day...but it’s not there.

My heart beats hard against my chest as I fall to my knees and pour the contents of my bag onto the floor. Pens and notebooks scatter, but there is no gold coin.

Where did I drop it?

The car.

I close the chest and shove it under the bed, darting down the stairs and outside. Opening the passenger side door, I look everywhere—between the seats and under, the cup holders, the glove box. I wade through the grass outside the car, and check the flowerbeds at the front of our house with no luck.

“Everything alright?” Mom asks from the front door. I twist to face her, heart leaping into my throat. How long has she been watching me?

“Yeah, everything’s fine.”

She looks between me and the car. “Lose something?”

“Just can’t find a folder I thought I brought home.”

Mom lifts her head, staring down her nose, and though my lie was smooth, I know she’s questioning me.

“Dinner’s ready.”

She turns without another word and enters the house.

I make my way back up the steps, watching my feet as I go, still searching for the coin. I’ll have to retrace my steps tomorrow—from the tree line where I captured the spirit to the stadium. Maybe check lost and found. Hopefully some Good Samaritan turned it in because a lost coin could mean a blown cover.

Inside, the house smells like tomato sauce, roiling my stomach.

Oh no.

“I made your favorite!” Mom says, smiling. The wrinkles on the sides of her eyes make her look happier than she has in a long time.

Too bad I’d basically thrown up tomatoes and fake meat today.